


Shadow

by CooperCooperGo



Series: After New York [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Assorted post-apoc gangs of my own creation, Canon Divergence - Post-Avengers (2012), Canon-Typical Violence, Clint Barton Needs a Hug, Dubious Guardian Angel, First Time, HopePunk, Hurt/Comfort, Intervention, Light Bondage, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Mission Fic, Post-Apocalypse, dubious therapy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:33:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 56,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25942180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CooperCooperGo/pseuds/CooperCooperGo
Summary: Clint is drunk the first time he sees Shadow, his mysterious guardian angel.Of course, Clint has been drunk pretty much mostly, as far as he can tell, since the fall of Manhattan. It’s only been a year but he’s already so good at getting drunk he thinks he may now be able to achieve a state of complete oblivion without having to go to the trouble of actually drinking. He’s got his very own top-shelf recipe: some toxic combination of sleep deprivation, the weird echoey blue bullshit left in his head from Loki, isolation—and murder.One year after the Avengers lost the Battle of Manhattan, Clint Barton—or Ronin, as they call him now—could really use a friend, although he’d be the first to deny it. What he's got instead is a gang war to fight, an orphanage to save, and a Shadow.
Relationships: Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton/Phil Coulson
Series: After New York [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1869133
Comments: 160
Kudos: 99





	1. Bloodloss

**Author's Note:**

> **_Shadow_ is an _After New York, Darkness_ prequel. I suppose it could stand alone, but it will probably be more fun if you read _[After New York, Darkness](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14304231/)_ first.**
> 
> _Shadow_ takes place the first year after the Fall of Manhattan, a year before _[After New York, Darkness](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14304231/)_ begins, when the world is quite a bit darker than it will be even a year later. Clint is not coping well in his new life post Avengers. Warnings for allusions to substance abuse and despair, please be mindful of your mental health, my friends.

_“You used to leave us food,” Jeni says,“remember? Caches. Stuff you’d find, good stuff. And you’d drop stuff off at Ms. Callie’s. Toys and clothes and things. She’d pass it around to us, share it out fair. Even to the little ones. She was nice. She died though.”_

_Clint tries to remember back past the haze of brutality and black-out drinking and the horrible blue-tinted memories of what Loki had made him do._

_“Sorry,” he says, giving up._

_“Don’t worry,” she says. “I remember you. I even remember Shadow. But don’t tell anyone I said so.”_

*

The first time he’d seen Shadow he’d been drunk. Of course, he’d been drunk pretty much mostly, as far as he could tell, since the fall of Manhattan. So that checks out. It’s only been a year but he’s already so good at getting drunk that Clint thinks he may now be able to achieve a state of drunkness without having to go to the trouble of actually consuming alcohol. He’s got his very own top-shelf recipe: some toxic combination of sleep deprivation from the nightmares, the weird echoey blue bullshit left in his head from Loki, handfuls of dubious pharmaceuticals scavenged from what’s left of the Duane Reades in midtown, and murder.

He may have perfected this cocktail. He calls it the Blue Meanie. Because Beatles. And also fuck Loki. Clint thinks he could maybe write a recipe book with all his despair cocktails in it. Become a mixologist. It’s good to have goals. “Aim High, But Start Low, Celebrate and Keep Going,” as the poster on his SHIELD-appointed therapist’s office wall had said. And there was a picture of cat or something on it. Or maybe it was a battleship. Hard to remember. But that was years ago, long before the whole Loki/Chitauri invasion shit show happened. Back when all he had to work through was just the regular murderings. The ones he’d signed up for. Not like…not like the ones….not like the helicarrier. He doesn’t want to think about that…

Anyway. Shadow. Right. The first time he’d seen him. Or seen her. Can’t really tell what’s under all that black tactical armour, and the big dramatic coat. Can’t see their face ’cause they always wear a mask. Mask, and some sort of eye thingy—not goggles, slimmer than that and closer to the face, more like it’s all one piece—anyway, something that softly reflects the light of the moon, the flicker of firelight from the squatters cook fires, the cold humming glare of the neon still kept burning off generators in Chinatown.

Yeah, mask. Completely covered, all in black. Impossible to see unless they moved or just happened to be silhouetted against the moon up on a rooftop with a rifle pointed at Clint’s head. Like the first time he saw him.

That reminds him of a story. A story about the first time he saw Shadow.

Oh yeah, this one! It’s this story! Ha, funny.

Anyway, he’d been surrounded by a bunch of assholes from the local tong and, he has to admit it, not exactly performing at peak efficiency, and he’d looked up at some motion caught out of the corner of his eye and seen Shadow up on the roof. And then he’d looked down and, like, four of those hatchet-men motherfuckers just dropped dead at his feet. Boom, just like that. Except there was no boom. Probably a suppressor of some kind on the rifle, no muzzle flash either. And when he’d looked up again, no Shadow.

That was the first time. 

The second time he saw Shadow…he can’t remember the second time. But there’d been a handful of times over the weeks and months since the first. Kinda runs together in his head. All mixed up with everything else. Anyway, Shadow just seemed to show up whenever Clint got himself into a tight spot. Which was a lot. Sometimes even accidentally.

He’s not sure when he’d started capitalising the word. When the black armoured ghost in the big coat stopped being just, like, _a_ shadow, and became _the_ Shadow. A name. Kind of like…a friend. The closest thing he has left to a friend. If you can call a barely-there assassin who he occasionally glimpses disappearing around corners or stalking across rooftops a friend.

That kinda reminds him of someone. It reminds him of Ronin. Oh wait, Clint is Ronin! He forgot!

Ha, he’s cracking himself up here. Clint tries to laugh but it comes out kinda gurgle-y. All the blood probably.

That was like another poster in his old therapist’s office.“If you make friends with yourself you’ll never be alone.” When he thinks about his lists of achievements—I mean, it’s not a long list. He’s perfected the Blue Meanie. What else…there must be something…

He can’t think of anything. He’s definitely never succeeded at the ‘making friends with yourself’ thing and he knows this ’cause he’s alone all the time. Him and the ghosts. All those blue ghosts. They don’t count.

And Shadow.

He wonders if there are any therapists left in the bombed out ruins of Manhattan and, if so, what the posters on their walls say.

Maybe he should try to think about something more profound right now. He’s kinda going into shock, he can tell, so there’s not going to be a whole lot of thinking left, probably. Nothing profound comes to mind, though.

The bullet got him in his side right between the plates of his body armour. I mean, it was totally a dumb luck shot. And small caliber so it’d taken him a while to even notice it, given the rest of the firefight and all the screaming. He thinks he can be forgiven for that. But, yeah, by the time he’d noticed it he’d already lost a lot of blood. Lost more of it climbing up here, finding someplace he can sit with his back against a wall and just be quiet for a minute. Or two. However long it takes.

So, anyway, back to the story…

Rifle. Roof. That was the first time he saw Shadow. All those other times. Blur. Right. Check.

So the _last_ time he saw Shadow is…right now. He’s looking at him right now.

Wait a minute, there’s two of them.

Clint blinks hard.

Nope, just one. That was probably just his vision going. Anyway…

He’s right there. Probably. Unless blood loss is making Clint hallucinate. But it seems pretty real. Shadow, just standing there. Looking at him. On the edge of the roof, all in black. Head to toe.

Clint thinks that Shadow would look great if maybe he had a cape to go with all that tac armour. Like Batman. It could stream out behind him in the wind blowing in from the Atlantic, all super dramatic and mysterious. But honestly this guy…person…whatever…moves like black ops. Like military, rather than superhero. That kind of vibe.

Shadow steps down onto the roof from the ledge. It’s weird just being able to stare at him like this. Generally Shadow is only a glimpse, something dark moving fast in the opposite direction.

Clint tries to get the sword up, so he’ll look more menacing. He knows Shadow isn’t really a friend, of course, it’s just fun to pretend. But it turns out he can’t raise his arm. Stupid gang guy with his stupid little handgun. That had totally been a lucky shot. Right through a tiny gap in Ronin’s armour. What are the odds. Stupid.

Shadow takes another step forward. He never speaks. Clint would like him to sometimes. If he could hear Shadow’s voice maybe he could tell if he’s a real person and not just Clint’s weird stalker anti-angel.

Clint should get up. He shouldn’t be out in the open like this. It’s cold. And probably half the people left in Manhattan would love to toss him off the building just to watch him hit the ground. Well, that’s fair. He can hardly blame them for that. All of this is pretty much his fault, really.

He didn’t think it’d be Shadow that got to him first, though.

Shadow crouches down beside him. Clint had missed the part where he walked across the roof. Probably blacking out a little by now. Or maybe Shadow can float or teleport or fly or something like…like some of those other guys he used to hang with. He doesn’t want to think about that…

“Sh…” it comes out more like ‘ssh’. He wonders if Shadow thinks Clint’s trying to tell him to shut up. That’d be funny. He tries to laugh again. Ends up with a sort of sad hiccupy wheeze.

Shadow reaches out a hand. Lays a finger against Clint's lips, his own version of 'shh.' His gloves are made of that grippy kevlar stuff. The texture feels weird against Clint’s mouth. A gentle pressure.

Then he grasps Clint’s chin and tilts his head to the side, exposing his neck. There’s the glint of something shiny catching the light.

Clint closes his eyes. It’s not gonna take much to finish him off at this point. Even a little knife would do it. It’ll probably be quick. Shadow seems to know what he’s doing.

Lucky shot…lucky for both of them after all. Clint can definitely think of worse ways to go. 

There’s a sharp prick at the side of his neck. And then nothing.


	2. The Deal

Someone’s talking.

“…found him. Shocky. Blood loss…”

The voice is familiar somehow. He can’t place it.

Some other voice answers. “…just in time. On the count of three. One…two…up!”

There’s a distant murmur of pain. Then, “something something…prognosis?”

It’s tantalising, that voice. Reminds him of someone. Someone who didn’t make it off the helicarrier.

The other voice, “…best we can...”

The void closes over his head as he sinks back into darkness.

*** 

Clint wakes up in a cot that’s too small for him, feet dangling off the end and the knuckles of one hand resting on the floor. A beam of something warm that he assumes is sunlight is assaulting him, turning the inside of his eyelids orange. He groans and tries to roll over to escape it and freezes, a saw blade of pain slicing through him. Everything hurts.

He breathes through it and blinks opens his eyes, stares up at the ceiling doing the mental inventory thing he’s perfected on those distressingly frequent occasions where he wakes up not having any idea how he got where ever the hell he now is. Head, one: hurting, arms: 2, legs: 2, vision…tracking. Good enough.

There’s some faint sound from somewhere near his feet. It takes what seems to be way too much effort for him to raise his head and look.

There’s a bunch of little kids clustered at the foot of the cot, staring at him. The children’s wide eyes are fixed on him, unblinking, big and round. Like a little herd of tiny stalker Bambis. It’s super creepy.

He lets his head flop back to the pillow. Whatever this is is too much trouble to think about right now. Maybe he’ll go back to sleep.

A few moments pass.

He can feel their eyes on him.

He sighs. Raises his head again and glares at the little knot of children. “What’s—”

Collectively their eyes widen, going impossibly huge. There’s a pause as they all suck in a breath at once, then the herd shrieks and thunders out of the room, skinny limbs flailing. Clint hears “He’s awake! He’s awake!” in a medley of high panicked voices dopplering down the stairs.

He resists the urge to clutch his head, cover his ears. _Ow, his head._ Dehydration headache. Familiar. He’s so thirsty…

He levers himself up with an effort, getting his elbows under him to shove his back against the wall and the side of a rickety old wardrobe flush against the front of the cot. He wedges himself into the corner that creates and breathes, fighting down nausea.

He’s not wearing a shirt. He has on a pair of black sweatpants that he for sure doesn’t own. The side below his ribs is neatly wrapped in clean white gauze secured with surgical tape. It’s a professional job. None of the street surgeons he frequents on the rare occasions he’s not sewing himself back together alone in some flophouse have material this pristine.

It was Shadow, he remembers in a rush. Shadow did this. He’d touched him, been so close.

Clint remembers that finger on his lips in a sort of dreamy, half-there way. Firm. Possessive.

That was—

Wait, Shadow’s a doctor? No, that can’t—but is it really that weird? I mean, he’s met a lot of white-collar types that had become more or less batman after the Chitauri apocalypse…

Clint’s attention is caught by patch of white on the inside of his elbow. He prises the tape up. There’s a puncture mark and slight bruising underneath. Someone inserted an IV there. He gropes at his neck, pries off another bit of tape, feels the puncture wound.

Maybe…Shadow had drugged him and gotten someone to patch him up? But no one in Manhattan has facilities like this anymore. And…why? Why would he…it doesn’t make any sen—

He looks up past the foot of the cot to the open doorway and the hall beyond. There’s the top of a small head of messy hair and two big brown eyes looking back at him from about the height of his knees. One grubby little hand is wrapped around the door jamb.

The head ducks back into the hall. He waits. The head slowly slides into sight again, one eye peeking out.

“Hello,” Clint says.

The child, probably about six or seven—he’s never been great at the whole sizing children thing—says, “Are you Ronin?”

Clint looks around but doesn’t see any of his gear. None of his clothes are here, none of his armour. He doesn’t see his weapons either and you’d definitely notice a whopping big samurai sword in a black scabbard if there was one in the room.

“Um. Yes?”

The child gasps—an indrawn breath—then screams, a piercing, high-pitched peal of terror. It echoes all the way down the stairs as she flees.

Clint drops his head into his hands. His head may actually split open. He doesn’t think he can take anymore screaming. Where is he? And what does he have to do to get out of here?

A heavier tread comes up the stairs, a woman emerging at the top into the hall beyond the door. She’s small and round with an impressive mane of dreads bound up on top of her head in a bright head wrap. She’s holding a green plastic pitcher in one hand and the hand of a little girl— presumably the one who had just assaulted him with her screaming—in the other.

The look on her face is not friendly. She’s not old but not young either, though he can’t guess her age, the apocalypse having a tendency to make people look older than they actually are. Her no-nonsense glare makes him think of a teacher he vaguely remembers from some primary school somewhere in the midwest. The kind that had access to those big, hard plastic rulers and were not afraid to use them.

“Did you frighten this child?” she asks.

“I...uh…sorry?”

“He’s Ronin,” the little girl says, clutching one of the woman's thighs. “Don’t let him cut off my head, Ms Callie.”

“It’s all right, Poppy, no one is cutting anyone’s head off here,” the woman says. “Isn’t that right?”

That last part had been directed at him. Clint shakes his head, no. Then immediately regrets moving it as another wave of nausea hits him.

The child emerges from behind the woman’s leg. “You won’t cut my head off, Mr Ronin?”

“Well…” he says, resisting the urge to throw up, “I don’t have the sword, so—”

The little girl shrieks and retreats behind the leg again.

The woman glares at him. Casts a pointed glance down at the child then back up at him again.

“Uh, I mean, no, of course not. Ronin…um, I…only, uh, hurt bad guys. Not, you know, kids.”

The child peers up at the woman. “Is that true?”

“Yes, it’s true, Poppy. If it weren’t I wouldn’t have given him a bed here. That makes sense, right?” She gives the child a gentle push toward the stairs. “Now go wait downstairs, I’ll be right down.”

The child looks up at her uncertainly. Then looks back at Clint. A determined expression solidifies her features. He blinks at her, not following whatever child reasoning is going on behind those big brown eyes.

“If you try to cut Ms Callie’s head off, you’ll be sorry!” she shrieks. Then whirls and runs down the stairs.

He really wishes everyone would stop yelling.

The woman hesitates, then steps into the room, holding out the pitcher. “Here. You should drink this.”

He raises a hand to take it, realizes it’s trembling violently and drops it again.

The woman exhales and places the pitcher on the bed, sort of wedged between his body and his arm, then backs away. There’s a long metal straw in it. He scootches down a little, manages to get it in his mouth and sucks up as much of the water inside as he can before he runs out of breath.

The water has the grimy texture and musty taste of one of New York’s ubiquitous rooftop water cisterns. Clint sighs and leans back again. He misses municipal tap water.

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” She eyes him. “My name is Callie. Callie Moore. You can call me Ms Callie.”

“I’m, uh, Ronin. Though I guess everyone already knows that.”

“That name won’t work for you here,” she says. “Pick another one.”

“Um…” Clint mentally cycles though his various aliases, most of them a more comfortable fit than Ronin, honestly, who at the end of the day is really kind of a dick. Hawkeye is out, too many memories. Just thinking about that name invites in an edge of blue-tinged panic. Some of the guys had called him Snotlocker back in the army—something about his nose—but that’s not really something he wants to…

“Is this hard for you? If you make me pick everyone will end up calling you Scooby or Spongebob, so—”

“Clint,” he says, surprising himself. He hadn’t given anyone his actual name in…forever. Since before. “You can call me Clint.”

She tilts her head. “All right, Clint. I expect you have questions. Fire away.”

*** 

It’s late. Or early depending on how you look at it. Clint lays on his back on the cot and looks up through a hole in the roof to the night sky beyond. It’s clear tonight, and a cool gentle breeze pushes in through the sensibly defensive bars cemented into the open windows. Callie had given him the whole attic apartment floor, said he’d have it to himself for the duration. It’s not much, broken in places, but secure enough, and about a million times better than the holes he usually squatted in. She’d told him she’d keep the children out of his way and even folded up the retractable steps after she left to make the point.

He’s to be given three meals a day and basic medical care for as long as he needs it. In return he has to stay sober and not murder anyone. Or scare the kids. That’s the deal.

He’d countered that he needed his weapons. No one in their right mind slept with a weapon in post-chitauri New York. They’d compromised with the understanding that’d he’d keep them locked up. The key to the big trunk holding them is on a footstool next to his cot, right by the green pitcher.

He honestly hadn’t even thought about the sober thing. Until now.

Clint’s beginning to realize he may have actually forgotten how to fall asleep. I mean, he’s great at passing out, that’s definitely something Ronin knows how to do; unconsciousness is totally not a problem. But after Manhattan fell and all his friends died, falling sleep had become a battleground. Sometimes he’d win but more often the memories would just kick him around for hours before he gave in, got up, and found something to either do or drink or inject himself with.

None of those things are an option at the moment. He’d just barely been able to make the trip down a short hallway into an improvised bathroom and back earlier. There’s no way in hell he could manage those stairs right now.

So instead Clint snuggles deeper into the thin, soft blanket—which has comic book Spidermans on it—looks up at the stars and waits for the assault to begin.

It’s weird to be in a bed—the cot is actually pretty comfy all things being equal—with a full belly and no one actively trying to kill him. She’d given him something for the pain, taken the bottle back downstairs with her. The painkiller left him a little drowsy. He felt loose-limbed and almost…content. Safe enough, for the moment. 

Callie had been cagey about telling him who brought him here. A couple of people in black tac gear had dropped him off, that’s all she’d say. People in Manhattan have learned not to ask questions when people like that show up. There are still some shadowy factions operational underground up and down the eastern seaboard: remnants of the government, the armed forces. Hell, probably even whatever’s left of the Avengers or maybe even SHIELD is out there somewhere doing who knows what. The people of Manhattan steer well clear of those types if they have any sense at all. Clint’s no exception.

“What are you getting out of this?” he’d asked.

“I’m not making enemies,” she’d said. “And I was promised food and supplies for the orphanage. It was an offer I didn’t feel I could refuse.”

It had to be Shadow. But why? And it’s super weird that Shadow is suddenly no longer, like, a possible figment of Clint’s imagination, but a person doing things like promising to help orphanages.And…taking care of Clint.

It’s been a long time since anyone’d cared whether he lived or died. He turns the feeling over in his mind, examines it. It feels warm and soft. Like the blanket.

“But who set it up?” he’d pressed. “Was it…was it someone in a black mask, with a long black coat?”

She’d looked at him dubiously. Like maybe he’d been reading too many comic books. Told him to get some sleep and she’d be back with breakfast in the morning.

He guesses morning’s not too far off. It’s quiet outside on the street; that peaceful interval of nighttime where everything is slower and deeper and stiller; late enough that the people who started self-medicating at sundown—and that’s pretty much everyone who can nowadays—are all deeply asleep and dreaming. That time of night where tomorrow is more an article of faith than anything else; a distant promise.

Clint heaves a sigh. He knows the contentment won’t last. He can feel the blue ghosts and the memory of screams waiting just off stage, sharpening their knives. They’ll get to him before dawn does.

A passing something blocks out the stars, then is gone. Clint blinks. What…?

Shadow drops down though a hole in the roof, landing noiselessly in a crouch in the corner of Clint’s bedroom.

Speak of the devil.


	3. Peaches

Clint resists the impulse to clutch the blanket to his chin like the heroine of a Victorian novel. He watches with a deep sense of unreality as Shadow slowly straightens out of his crouch. Like he’s in a dream. Or a nightmare.

He risks a glance at the key on the footstool next to the bed. There’s no way in hell he can get into the trunk in time to do anything useful with the weapons inside. And he’s not going to hand-to-hand someone who’s in full body armour, he can barely stand up.

Clint grits his teeth and gets his elbows under him, pushes himself up and back into the corner between the wall and the cot. He may be gut-shot and half naked but at least he’s going to be sitting up for this, goddammit. Whatever the hell this is.

Shadow just stands there, motionless. He’s taking up way too much space within the confines of the apartment, kitted out for combat, too large and too improbable to be inside a bedroom in an attic. It’s not that the suit is bulky, it’s not, it’s as form fitting as reinforced kevlar and ballistic plate can be. It hugs Shadow’s broad shoulders, narrow hips…

Clint realizes all at once that Shadow’s not wearing the ankle length coat. And also that Shadow is most definitely male.

Shadow takes a step toward him, tread heavy but silent. Then another. Like each step is a calculation, a decision being made. The details of the suit come into focus as he gets closer. It’s all black moulded composite, advanced tech, like something out of one of SHIELD’s cutting-edge labs before the invasion. Threads of blue light trace the geometry of it, pulsing faintly like the suit is powered, possibly some sort of skeletal assist. It emits a faint hum, a subvocal purr that’s almost imperceptible, just under the high tech skin.

Shadow stops at the edge of the cot. He looks down at Clint, all flat moulded planes and coiled menace. Clint wedges himself as far back into the corner as he can and looks up, reluctantly.

The full face mask is completely opaque. Softly reflective. The only thing he can see in it is himself. His reflection stares back at him, eyes too wide, dark shadows underneath, hollow cheeks and a week’s worth of scruff; shoulders jammed into the corner between the cot and the wardrobe. He tries to rearrange his features into something that appears less vulnerable, something harder and more intimidating. But it’s kinda difficult to bulldog someone in full tactical when you’re shirtless and clutching a Spiderman blanket at four in the morning.

“You could have knocked,” he says, trying for cocky. The attempt sounds lame and desperate even to himself.

Shadow looms over him, motionless.

“Did you come to murder me?”

“No.”

Clint starts. He hadn’t actually expected Shadow to speak. The voice is processed, scrubbed. Something artificial layered over a deep inflection, sort of a cross between a whisper and a rasp. Clint looks for, locates, the throat mic under the face-plate.

“Then what the hell do you want?”

“I came to help you,” Shadow says.

Clint boggles a little at that, then snorts out a startled laugh. _Yeah, right._

There’s no one out there left to help. He’d seen to that when he’d murdered them all on the helicarrier. Seriously, who the hell does this guy think he is?

“What do you care?” he spits out, suddenly furious. 

“Maybe I don’t care,” Shadow says. “Yet, here I am.”

Shadow reaches out a hand, abruptly. The black gauntlet is thick around his forearms and wrists, a vein of blue light tracing along the edges of it, winding around his knuckles, curling over the heel of his hand. There’s a ring of thin barrels around it like Widow’s bracers used to have—the ones that delivered 30,000volt high frequency electrostatic charges. Clint flinches back and hates himself for doing it.

“Don’t—!”

Shadow palms a handful of the blanket and slides it off his body, exposing him. Tosses the blanket to the foot of the bed.

Reaches for him again.

Clint gets up a block but it’s a poor thing, shaky and weak, a desperate push without any power behind it. His forearm slides off Shadow’s gauntlet and falls to his side. He’s not sure he has the strength to do it again.

Shadow takes half a step back. What Clint suspects is a deep sigh inside the mask comes out as a sort of mechanical purr.

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

…and now he’s being patronised. “Fuck off,” he snaps.

Shadow breathes for a moment, the mask venting the faintest murmur of recycled air. Then he looks around and drags the footstool by the bed close, placing the objects on it on the floor. He slowly and very deliberately sits down and begins taking off his gloves. It’s a complex process, pressing and toggling and unsnapping components, the various clicks and snicks and pops loud in the open room. He slides the gauntlets off, lays them neatly on the floor, one by one. Then he peels off one of the long kevlar-woven gloves, exposing his hand and wrist, forearm strong, banded with tendon.

Clint abruptly remembers the texture of that glove against his lips. Again. Dammit. That’s not—

“What are you doing?” he demands.

“I am demonstrating a willingness to put myself in a symbolic position of vulnerability by disarming myself,” Shadow says, peeling off the other glove. “This will hopefully help you abandon the illusion you currently have that you have any control over my actions, which will facilitate getting on with checking your stitches and assessing the condition of your wound. Which is what I came here for and what I _will do_ before I leave.”

The idea that Shadow has made himself less dangerous by taking off his gloves is utter bullshit. Clint snorts out a bitter laugh. “Let me guess, you were a psychologist before the invasion.”

“Something like that.”

Shadow reaches for him again.

“Stop!”

This time the frustrated sigh is almost audible. “Clint, this display of adolescent rebellion is a waste. You are burning resources you’d don’t have. If you persist I will simply sedate you and do what I came here to do anyway.”

Clint thinks about being unconsciousness with Shadow’s gloveless hands on him.

“I don’t need your help!”

Shadow calmly flips open one the pouches on his vest and extracts a hypodermic syringe.

“Dammit, wait!”

He pauses but Clint can tell that whatever reservoir of patience Shadow came in with is almost tapped out.

Clint pushes himself deeper into his corner, fingers gripping the thin mattress of the cot. “Take off the mask,” he says.

He can almost feel the puzzled frown. “Why?”

Because Clint can’t stand another second of looking at himself like this in the mirror of its surface, that’s why. Because even though it’s weird and fucked up and pathetic, on some buried, deliberately unexamined level he realizes he may actually be a little desperate for someone to help him. Because he’s forgotten what it feels like to be helped. Because he can’t quite remember what it feels like to have a hand on him that isn’t trying to hurt, that won’t leave a bruise. Because he’s not sure he knows how to be still and quiet and let someone take care of him anymore.

And because he needs a concession before he can let himself admit to any of that. To allow it. To give into it.

He watches the ballet of his emotion play out over the surface of Shadow’s mask. Senses but cannot see the calm assessment going on behind it.

Shadow tucks the syringe away. Then reaches into another pocket on the vest and pulls out a long length of black cloth. Tosses it at him. It lands in a puddle of fabric on Clint’s belly.

He picks it up. The cloth is heavy and cool in his hands. Soft like silk but thicker. Smooth. He slips the length of it though one fist, feeling it warm under his touch.

“I don’t—?”

Shadow shrugs. “Your choice.”

_Oh._

Before he can talk himself out of it Clint grasps the blindfold and raises his hands to tie it on. Realizes almost at once that it’s going to be hard to keep his arms up for that long.

Shadow leans forward, takes the cloth away from him and places it over his eyes. Winds it around, around again, and ties it off securely at back of his neck. The blindfold sits comfortably against his skin, snug but not too tight. Containing him. Shadow smooths down the fabric, fingers firm and sure. Then releases him with a gentle push back into his corner.

Not the slightest bit of light comes through. Seeing is now no longer an option. Clint leaves his eyes open anyway, a reminder of what he no longer has the power to do.

There’s a click and a gentle hiss of air, some shuffling and a soft thunk of something heavy being placed on the floor. He listens to Shadow take a breath—a human breath, un-cycled through a filter—and exhale it slowly.

“If you attempt to take that off I will restrain you,” Shadow says. His voice hasn’t changed, still tempered by the throat mic, deep and a little scratchy. It’s disappointing that Clint doesn’t get to hear what he really sounds like...

Still, that sentence in Shadow’s calm, sure voice raises goosebumps on his arms. Oh and hello, that tiny twinge definitely came from his cock. That’s new. He’d almost forgotten he had one of those. _What the hell._

Clint shakes his head, not trusting himself to speak.

There’s a faint scuff—wood against wood—probably the footstool moving closer to the bed. The silence in the room stretches, Clint’s senses looping outward in the dark, straining to pick up any indication of what’s coming.

The first touch of Shadow’s hands is shocking. It’s as if an electric current jolts though him at the moment of contact, all his nerves jerking to attention at once. He feels the muscles clench in his abdomen.

“Easy,” Shadow murmurs. He’s closer. The virtually inaudible hum of the suit is more present, and Clint can almost feel the boundary of heat given off by his body, just out of reach.

Shadow lays one hand flat over the bandages that cover Clint’s side, the other coming to rest on the gauze that wraps around his waist. He strokes across the expanse of his belly, soothing, before lifting his hand to trace the edges of the gauze, fingers searching for the ends of the tape. He works his fingers underneath, gently prying it up.

He’s done this before. There’s no hesitation in his hands, no doubt, no uncertainty.

“Aren’t you going to ask if I’m a ‘peel the bandaid off a bit at a time’ or ‘rip it off all at once’ kind of guy?” The question comes out a little breathless. Clint is hyper aware of the rise and fall of his abdomen under Shadow’s hands. He tries not to breathe too deeply, skin twitching at the contact.

“I know what kind of guy you are.” Shadow says this absently, like he’s not really paying attention, focused on his task.

The tape is removed and Shadow unwinds the gauze holding the bandage into place, hands patient and deliberate. Clint hears the gauze fall to the floor in a whispery coil. Strong fingers pull the bandage away, exposing his skin to the air. Shadow presses at the edges of the suture, feeling for heat, signs of infection. It hurts a little. It hurts and it reminds him of someone, someone else whose hands were also strong and gentle, patient and kind. Someone who helped Clint…before. One of the ones who had actually cared. I mean, probably. They’d never really talked about it, of course, and now…

Now it was too late. Another one who didn’t make it off the helicarrier.

Clint’s curls his hands into fists at his side. He’s not going to think about Coulson right now. 

“ _Shh_ ,” Shadow breathes. “Be still.”

The _shh_ takes him right back to the night on the roof, to the floaty twilight consciousness of pain and blood loss. To the feeling of letting go.

“Almost done,” Shadow says, one hand heavy at his side, the other gently probing.

Some warm feeling sweeps through him. Something liquid, like deep water. Maybe he’s just tired. Tired of fighting all the time.

Clint gives in. Relaxes into his corner, lets himself be handled.

There are sounds of some manipulation. The snap of a cap. Something cool and antiseptic smelling pressed into his skin. The crispy tear of packaging, the sharp snickt of tape. The underlying hum of Shadow’s armour. Clint loses track of time, everything blurring together: the press of Shadow’s fingers, the smooth glide of his palm, the heat of his skin—all a sort of symphony being played out upon him. He soaks it in, like water in the desert. Moves a little when he can’t help it, responsive to Shadow’s touch.

“You’re undernourished,” Shadow says at last, skimming a hand over Clint’s ribs. He sounds like maybe that displeases him.

Probably some time has passed.

“Mm,” Clint manages, resurfacing.

Shadow’s hands lift away, fingers trailing, a fresh bandage in place, snuggly wrapped. Clint tries not to mourn the loss. There’s a long pause where he breathes into the silence then a papery sound, and abruptly something curved and velvety is placed against his cheek. He fights the impulse to move away from it, caught by the scent—fresh and sweet and mouth-watering. Familiar but almost forgotten.

“What is—?”

“Can you guess?” A little warmth has maybe crept into Shadow’s voice, a bit of mischief.

Clint inhales deeply. Fruit? But fuzzy.

He draws in another deep breath. Some memory emerges; his brother tucked into a branch of a grizzled old peach tree, handing down ripe fruit to him. Summer. Cicadas and endless blue skies and crunchy dry grass under bare feet.

“Is that…a peach? Are you serious? Where the hell did you get a peach?”

Shadow huffs out a breath, the tiniest concession to humor. “That would be telling,” he says.

The fruit is withdrawn. There’s a rustle and the snick of a knife blade being released.

The burst of fragrance takes him by surprise. It fills the room—like angels singing, like the sun steaming forth after a storm. He can’t remember the last time he even saw fresh fruit, much less eaten any, and now he’s submerged in a cloud of the sweet-tart scent of a perfectly ripe fresh peach. He feels like he might drown in it.

“Oh my god,” he whispers. He hopes he isn’t drooling.

Shadow makes some sound that’s maybe a little amused before the throat mic turns it into something else. “Would you like some?”

“Are you kidding? Yes!” Clint can’t remember the last time he’d actually wanted to eat something—viewed eating as anything other than a tedious necessity.

He reaches up blindly, gasps when a strong hand closes on his wrist.

Shadow tucks his hand firmly back into his side. “I believe I told you to be still. Unless you want me to bind you?”

 _*Zing* Hello, it’s me, your cock again._ Clint grits his teeth.

“I—”

“Open your mouth,” Shadow says.

Clint gapes a bit. This is…I mean it was one thing, with the bandage and the…the first aid…and all. But this…

Some part of him offers up a mental shrug. In for a penny, in for a pound. He opens his mouth.

A slice of fresh peach is placed gently on his tongue. Clint closes his mouth around it and chews. The first burst of flavor almost chokes him, tart sweetness filling his mouth. He’s been living on food scavenged from the ruins of the city for over a year. The overall taste of the fuel he needs to survive is a kind of dull grey necessity. But this…this is…

He may actually moan a little around the mouthful of fruit.

There’s a soft rumble from Shadow. “Good?”

Clint swallows. Licks his lips. Somehow the taste is only enhanced by the darkness behind the blindfold, by the inability to see. Enhanced too by his helplessness, his inability to take this for himself.

He opens his mouth again.

There’s an indrawn breath from Shadow. Some long pause while Clint waits in the darkness for him to choose. Finally Clint feels him reach out, feels his fingers trace hard line of Clint’s jaw, thumb at the corner of his mouth.

Another slice is placed on his tongue. He closes around it and chews slowly, listening to the only sound in the room—Shadow’s breathing, somehow more audible, deeper than before.

This slice is bigger. The peach is ripe, full, and he didn’t expect…he…a bit of juice escapes. He can feel it slide down the curve of his chin, his neck. He suppresses the impulse to raise a hand, wipe it away, with an effort.

There’s a touch at his neck, a finger tracing the path of it, catching the drip. A pause, and then a brush against his lips.

Clint doesn’t think about it. He opens his mouth and sucks Shadow’s finger in, tongue circling the heavy pad of it, chasing the last of the flavor.

Another hand comes up, grips his jaw—tight, insistent—tips his head back. The finger inside his mouth is no longer passive, it presses against the curl of his tongue, he closes his lips around it.

Shadow makes some sound. Clint doesn’t know what it was before the throat mic transforms it. But whatever it is it goes straight to his cock. Clint feels Shadow lean in, feels his breath against his neck. Feels what could be the merest brush of his nose against his temple. Shadow pulls against the suction of Clint’s lips, thumb brushing his jaw, then thrusts in again, insistent, unrelenting. Clint sucks hard around it, wanting it somehow deeper, feeling it thick in his mouth, filling him up. Shadow withdraws and pushes in again. And again. The wet sounds Clint is making, the sound of Shadow’s breathing grow louder, throb against his skin.

Lost in sensation, an image of how they must look together in the lonely stillness of the attic room seizes him—Shadow hard and all in black, Clint soft and human colored, caught and held by him, head tilted back, taking whatever he chooses to give.

HIs cock is hard against his thigh, pushing against the fabric of the sweatpants he thinks Shadow must have dressed him in. He squirms and reaches out a hand, desperate for more contact.

There’s a sharp intake of breath and the finger is withdrawn. The heat, the presence that surrounded him, the breath on his skin is suddenly gone. Cold air rushes in to take its place. Clint gasps with a piercing sense of loss. Sits panting in his corner, suddenly alone again.

“Shadow—” he whispers.

There’s the rustle of some activity. It’s difficult for Clint to follow, his senses all on fire, the withdrawal of Shadow’s solid presence confusing. At last a hand touches him—both hands—they undo the knot at his nape, unwind the blindfold, linger against his skin. Clint looks up into Shadow’s mirrored mask, sees the longing on his own face, looks away.

“You—you’ll be fine,” Shadow says. His voice is low, halting. “I have to go.”

Clint closes his eyes, turns his face away into the solidity of the wall. There’s some mechanical noise, the whirring of servos, the push of hydraulics, and the room is empty again. He does’t have to look to know Shadow is gone.

He presses the heel of his hand against his erection, feeling it subside, so unlikely in the first place, as if this had all been some sort of dream that he’s only just now awakened from.

Clint slumps back onto the cot, suddenly exhausted, and lays there looking up at the stars through the hole in the roof; colder now and farther away, the first hint of a softer indigo in the sky as dawn approaches.

The blue ghosts are still there somewhere along the edges of his mind. Still waiting. But they’re slow-moving now and heavy; a distant threat, like a thunderstorm far out to sea. A problem for another day. Like whatever the hell just happened. He’s really too tired to think about it.

He falls asleep.


	4. Trouble Coming

The people left in Manhattan have learned to love the rain. The Chitauri don’t patrol in the rain; it’s got something to do with the way their stupid little air scooters work. The frequency of the patrols has been slacking off anyway over the past several months, Clint thinks. They’d been really bad right after, when Loki’s invading army seemed to have only one goal in mind—to tear up as much of the city as they could. A lot of people had died then, their bones still decomposing under the toppled skyscrapers of Mahnattan. There’d been no one to dig them out. The living had more important things to do, like hiding. And surviving.

Everyone had pretty much lived underground then, in basements and subway tunnels, the first several months after the fall. But there was only so much room down there, and people got tired of fighting all the time for the best spots. Gradually, as the bombings had stopped and the patrols decreased, people starting staying longer above ground, hungry for the sky, longing to feel the wind on their skin. Even if it was filled with smoke and the dust of decomposing concrete, and the cloying sweet sour stench of their neighbors rotting underfoot. 

Anyway, rain. Like now. It’s really the only time the city kind of seems like itself, like it was a year ago, before everything went to shit. The patter of drops on concrete and corrugated tin, the splash of sidewalk puddles, one of those light but steady rains that gripped the city, sometimes for days.

He misses the cars when it rains like this, the swish of tires on the streets below, the whine of a siren trying to get through midtown traffic, the short, impatient horn taps from the taxis when the traffic lights change. But the voices are the same as they were then—people emerging into the streets, the mixed soup of a dozen different languages, the occasional shout; snatches of music, laughter. People gathering on rooftops up and down the street, standing under rickety shelters hammered together from scrap, having barbecues in the rain.

Clint sighs and relaxes back into the crappy old lawn chair one of the kids had brought him. He takes another swig from the bottle of PBR Callie had given him, savouring it. “Just one,” she’d said. “It’s a nice evening out, enjoy it.”

Callie’s in a matching chair next to him peering through a pair of high powered binoculars across the street into what’s left of Little Italy. The sun’s going down and whatever she’s looking at isn’t going to be visible much longer. She’s got a kid tucked under her arm on both sides of the chair and one draped across her feet playing with half a Barbie. The other children are ranged over the roof, like them, under improvised shelters of tarp and sheets of corrugated tin, chasing one another in and out of the rain, hunched together in groups, playing. One of the older kids is tending one of those cheap spherical backyard grills, the scent of mystery meat hotdogs mixing with the wet smells of the street, the old tar of the rooftop, the unwashed bodies of the kids.

He’s trying not to learn their names. Their faces. He’s not gonna be here long. They’re not his problem.

The little girl he’s trying to forget is Poppy is standing over in a corner watching him. When he looks up she raises two fingers, points them at her own eyes, then flips her hand to point directly at Clint. He wonders if it’s okay to be intimidated by an eight year old. He cuts his eyes and takes another sip of his beer.

“So. Beer and hotdogs,” he says. “Big night.”

“No buns,” Callie says without dropping the ’nocs, “but we got some crackers. And mustard. Ketchup too, thanks to you.”

It’d been two weeks since he got shot. Two weeks since he’d seen Shadow, which he is definitely not going to think about right now because the half-hearted boner remembering that night inevitably caused would be deeply inappropriate around all these kids.

Shadow had apparently been as good as his word. The payment he’d promised Callie kept coming, regular as clockwork. Every three or four days, a couple of small crates of stuff, a weird eclectic mix of prime loot left mysteriously sometime in the night. Most of it is canned stuff, like the hotdogs tonight, which are actually those Vienna sausage things covered in that disgusting jelly stuff which everyone used to throw out. I mean, not now, of course. But, you know, pretty close to hotdogs anyway.

And there were occasional bags of fresh stuff. Like the peaches.

Clint had felt all touched about Shadow showing up with the miracle of a fresh peach for maybe twelve hours. Right up until he’d woken up to find Callie had brought him another one. ‘His fair share,’ she’d told him, and Clint had realized the fruit had been part of Shadow’s payment to the orphanage, not something he brought just for him. I mean, it was still a miracle. But it wasn’t his miracle, not really.

The sense of disappointment that had filled him then was weird. Just like the erection the night before. Clint had thought maybe Loki had burned all the emotion out of him. All the desire. He wasn’t happy, actually, to find out that stuff was apparently still in there, somewhere. I mean, who knows what else is down there waiting to come up…

So, you know, the thing with Shadow—it was just a thing. Not premeditated or special or anything. A thing that happened. No big. Clint’s gonna blame the blood loss and the painkillers.

But then, a handful of days later, he’d remembered something.

Shadow had called him Clint.

“You didn’t tell Shadow my name, did you?” he’d asked Callie that night.

All the kids were up on the roof again. Clint could hear them up there chasing each other around and laughing. He’d mostly slept though the first couple of times they did it but as he got stronger they were harder to ignore. The little ones kept dropping their adorable tiny heads through the holes in his ceiling and begging him to come join them. That and the aroma of barbecue had finally done him in.

“Who?”

“Shadow. Guy in body armour, big black helmet mask thingy? Kinda hard to miss.”

“This again. You know that’s a hallucination, right? You were pretty out of it when they brought you in.”

He takes a bite of his soy burger, chews speculatively. “But if he _was_ real, you haven’t—?”

“No I haven’t told anyone your name. We don’t talk to them, Clint. They show up with stuff, we take it. No questions asked is the deal.”

So how had Shadow known who he was?

Clint shakes his head, worries at the label of his PBR with his thumbnail. He can’t figure it out. Just like he can’t shake the feeling there was something familiar about him. About his hands. The way he touched him. The way he…

_ANYHOO._

Now he kinda thinks that maybe the peach Shadow had fed him had been his. That is, that Shadow’d maybe had held one back for himself. To eat or as a present for someone, or something. And he’d impulsively decided to give it to Clint instead. Clint thought that Shadow had maybe sounded a little surprised that he wanted…wanted to…

Anyway, thinking about it that way filled him up with something glowy and special. Another feeling he’d thought he’d forgotten.

It’s stupid. Feelings aren’t survival skills. Desire isn’t good for anything in the Mad Max apocalypse. He’s much better off without any of that crap.

But…

Thinking about that night—the smell of the fruit, the weight of the blindfold against his skin, the sound of Shadow’s breathing—drifting off to to sleep thinking about Shadow bending over him in the dark, his hands on him, with his…the way he’d…

It was dumb but it kind of helped. Getting to sleep, that is. Knowing that someone out there maybe wanted him. Found him worth something…for a little while anyway.

He still gets the nightmares, sure. But there’d been more than one night since then that Clint had woken up and realized not only had he managed to fall asleep without a bottle and a handful of pharmaceuticals, but that he’d stayed asleep, without waking up clammy with sweat, his throat sore from screaming, even once. 

So. There’s that anyway.

Still stupid, though. Besides, he’s not thinking about stupid Shadow and his stupid peach right now. And he is most definitely not stupidly wondering if Shadow will come back one night with another one. Like, what if he wakes up one night and Shadow is just standing there, watching him. And maybe this time Shadow takes off the mask without Clint having to ask and maybe he’s all scary looking, or maybe he’s someone he used to know, like—no, that would be sad, never mind that—and he wouldn’t be able to see him that well in the dark anyway, but definitely still hot. And Shadow wouldn’t say anything, he’d just swing a leg over the cot and like, straddle Clint just like that, and he’d lean in and be all heavy on top of him—the right kind of heavy—pushing him into the thin mattress, his breath hot on his neck, and then he’d start to move—

_AAAH. Not thinking about it! Lah la laaaah!_

“So!” Clint says, crossing his legs, “nice night, right?” He shifts in the lawn chair, which squeaks forlornly. “Er, what are you looking at?”

Callie lowers the binoculars and sighs. She strokes though the hair of one of the children beside her and the little boy twitches in his sleep. “The Canolli Mafia,” she says, picking up her bottle and draining the rest of the beer.

“The what?”

“That’s just what I call ‘em, I’m sure they’ve got something more macho and dumb for themselves. They’ve had their eye on this part of the block for awhile. Been a couple of skirmishes.”

“I thought this was The Riveters territory,” Clint says. He can hardly keep up with the shifting little fiefdoms forming and clashing and dissolving in the ruined city, all their petty little turf battles, a new gang every other week. Still, he makes an effort. It’s kind of his job now. 

“It is,” she says, “and I pay them protection, of course, for this place. But they’ve lost people recently, not as strong a deterrent as they used to be. The Canolli’s can smell something’s up in Chinatown, they’ve increased their patrols. And I think maybe they’re watching us.”

She doesn’t look at him. “It’s possible word’s gotten out good salvage is coming in and they want in on the action.”

A sudden chill runs up his spine. “You don’t think it’s because of me—”

“Nah,” she says. “I mean, yeah, people know we’ve got food here. And that makes us a target. But everyone also knows who’s giving it to us. That’s a deterrent. It balances out.”

“Who _is_ giving it to you?” he asks. Shadow is just one guy. Clint can’t picture him humping crates of groceries up to Callie’s in the dark. He must have people working for him.

“No one knows who they are,” Callie says. “They’re trouble though, heavy hitters. Professionals. You’ve got powerful friends, Clint.”

Does he? News to him. Also, it just seems super unlikely. Dammit, he should have spent more time that night asking Shadow questions, not sucking on his finger and wishing it was his—

_Jesus, what the hell, Clint. Just stop._

“Here you go, Mr Ronin,” a little kid says, handing him a hotdog on a chipped plastic Ninja Turtles plate.

“Thanks, Jayden.” He mentally slaps himself. He is _not_ learning their names. The gunshot wound is healing clean. He’s only gonna be here for a couple more weeks.

There’s a flash of lightning, startling in the open space of the roof. Everyone freezes as thunder rolls over the city. Clint blinks away the after images, hoping he hadn’t really seen shapes moving in the shadows out on the street.

He thinks about the defences of Callie’s building. He hasn’t been all over the whole place yet, but from what he’s seen they’re shit. The Chinese Merchants Association on Mott is old and well built, sure, and the collapsed buildings around it form a kind of dry moat, but it’s too big and spread out to be defended by one adult and a bunch of skinny preteens.

He take a bite of his dog and tries to shake the feeling trouble’s coming.


	5. Ronin Meets The Riveters

Clint spends the morning unpacking his gear from the trunk in the attic bedroom; scrubbing the blood off it and assessing the damage. It’s not too bad. He was right, the bullet had been a lucky shot, slipping smoothly between panels of trauma plate without busting up the rig. The Ronin costume is shit, anyway, it’d never been intended as a comprehensive kit. Not like the stuff they used to make for him at SHIELD.

He’d put the suit together himself, and thought of it as kind of a joke, really—a riff off Scorpion from Mortal Kombat. He still hears the theme song from the terrible 90s movie playing in his head when he puts it on sometimes, some guy screaming MORTAL KOMBAT every couple of seconds as he walks down the street. It works for the city as it is now. Just the right combination of stupid and deadly and funny and pathetic.

Just like the guy wearing it.

It surprises him every time he sits down to repair the thing. He honestly hadn’t expected the suit to last this long. Hadn’t expected _himself_ to last this long. He’d always thought of it as more of a burial shroud than something he’d need to keep patching up. That had been the plan anyway.

He gets it all on without pulling his wound too badly. And without thinking too much about what he’s doing. He doesn’t particularly like what’s been on his mind since the last barbecue in the rain; Callie, and her big, stupid building and all the fragile little bodies inside it.

He puts on the mask, pulling the heavy leather hood up past the sword on his back.

Callie is standing in the doorway in front of the stairs, arms crossed. Her disapproving glare is blistering a spot into the side of his head.

“I know what you said, all right? I’m just gonna go out for a bit, I’m not technically breaking the rules.”

“You are.”

“Gimme a break, okay? I can’t haul all this gear out to a phone booth and put it on like Superman.” Clintthinks about that. “There aren’t even phone booths anymore.”

“Why do you even need it anyway, if all you’re going to do is talk?”

Because his gut is still healing and he doesn’t have all day and Ronin in his full getup saves a lot of talking, that’s why. He’s got a reputation. A not insubstantialpercentage of people in what’s left of Manhattan turn around and run in the opposite direction when they see him coming. A clear savings on the talking front. And he finds that the rest are a lot more inclined to do what he tells them, which suits him.

Clint had floated this idea to Callie. About talking to The Riveters. He’d thought it was probably polite to at least mention it to her. And maybe he’d hoped she’d talk him out of it a little. He’s still not sure why he’s doing it. But he can’t sit up on the roof for one more night and watch the shadows moving in the dark without doing something.

He wonders if one of those shadows is his Shadow. Probably not. He can’t picture Shadow running around with a bunch of gang bangers on the streets of Little Italy.

What he needs to know is who _is_. Assess the threat. So he’s just gonna go out and introduce himself to the locals. Find out what’s happening. Talk. 

“Ms Callie, can we—?”

Jayden and Chloe freeze at the top of the stairs. Chloe, who’s probably 4 or 5, screams.

This is not the same screaming as when he first met these kids. Those had been the kind of thing kids do when they’re having fun scaring themselves. Chloe’s scream isn’t something she’s doing on purpose. This scream is the kind of thing that erupts from someplace deep inside, the last action of prey before teeth close on the windpipe. It cuts off when she clamps tiny hands over her mouth, both the children stiff and silent, shockedtears sliding unnoticed from wide, panicked eyes.

Callie goes to her knees, scoops them up into her arms, turns them so they can’t see Clint anymore. They whimper into her neck, little hiccuping sobs and gasps for breath.

 _Jesus christ._ Funny how less than a month of eating hotdogs on the roof in his sweatpants has somehow managed to make him forget he’s a fucking monster.

He raises a hand to take the mask off again. Callie looks up sharply and shakes her head. “Just go,” she says.

He turns, slapping the trunk lid shut and pushing it over to the corner of the room—to the hole in the roof that Shadow came in. Then steps up, gets a handhold, and vaults onto the roof without looking back.

*** 

It’s sometime after 1 in the afternoon, probably, and the streets are mostly quiet. A lot of people in Manhattan haven’t been awake long. There’s no such thing as a regular schedule anymore and you’re always less of a target in the dark. People have adapted.

It’s overcast, a typical late summer day in the city. A light rain is coming down so he doesn’t have to worry about the Chitauri buzzing around overhead like toxic alien mosquitos. That simplifies things.

He hangs a right on Canal then turns into Bowery, walking slowly up the middle of the street like he doesn’t give a shit. Because Ronin doesn’t give a shit. It bothers him that right now Clint kinda does.

He’s maybe beginning to understand that the weeks at Callie’s have made him soft. Some combination of sleep and regular meals and sobriety. The desire in Shadow’s voice. The smiles of all those little kids, their laughter, their easy trust. Callie’s calm patience. Seems like it’s kinda rubbed off on him.

The cracks they’ve made in Ronin’s shell pisses him off. They’ll have to be sealed up all over again.

He’ll think about it later. Or not if he can help it. Right now he doesn’t have far to go. A couple blocks uptown to the old Bowery Savings Bank, Callie had said.

He remembers it. One of those fancy old banks built in the 1800s, all marble columns and classical doodads carved into the space above big metal doors. Iron lions out front. That kind of thing. Someone had turned the place into a nightclub at some point, but he’d never been inside. He tries to remember what he used to do for fun before the whole Avengers shitshow but it’s hard to get through the thick blue haze Loki left to the other side. He thinks he probably wasn’t going to hipster discos, though.

Anyway, that’s where he’ll find the Riveters, Callie’d told him. Clint approves. Sensible place to live if you’re an up and coming gang with long term ambitions in Mad Max Chinatown. Stone, defensible, not many windows. Completely unlike Callie’s building on Mott.

He walks slowly, taking his time. He wants his reputation to get there before he does.

They’re all standing out in front of the bank when he arrives. He appreciates the effort they’re putting intolooking all slouchy and casually tough: lots of bandanas and baggy pants, guns (almost certainly empty) tucked into waistbands, knives strapped to every available surface. One of them is actually leaning against one of the marble columns of the bank’s facade pretending to clean their fingernails with a switchblade.

If he wasn’t in persona Clint would shake his head.

He looks them over, taking his time, giving them the opportunity to wonder what’s going to happen next. He notes those inclined to fidget. Weak spots.

“I’m looking for the boss of The Riveters,” he says. The mask distorts his voice. People have to strain to hear what he’s saying. It makes them feel even more vulnerable, and that works to his advantage. It also has the added benefit of making even as dumb a sentence as ‘I’m looking for the boss of _insert_ _stupid gang name here_ ’ sound menacing.

A woman steps up. He makes her late twenties, short and slight. Not bad upper body—yoga, probably—and covered with a dizzying array of tats. The tattoos are pretty though, bold twining flowers, stars and hearts with daggers through them. Artistic. Something done before the Chitauri then, not punched into flesh by one of the back alley survivors who’ll do you a full sleeve for a couple bottles of bathtub bourbon. Clint would know.

She hooks a chin at him, says “Who wants to know?”

Bluff. A year spent carving people up like steaks means pretty much everyone on this side of town knows who the hell he is.

He sizes her up, eyes calm over the top of the mask. Her chin is up, trying to present confidence. But she’s scared. He doesn’t blame her. Ronin is scary. But she’s holding her own. Not bad for someone who was probably a dental hygienist or something before. He ignores the question.

“Callie Moore at the CMA on Mott pays you for protection.”

“That’s right,” she says, defiant.

“Show me what she’s buying.”

A woman standing next to her starts forward. She’s thicker and much taller, movements contained, balance forward on the balls of her feet. Ex military probably. “We don’t have to show you sh—”

The sword is out and at her throat before he registers the need to draw. Ronin stands there, arm extended, the sword’s tip a millimetre from her skin. He doesn’t bother to turn his head to look at her, feeling the length of the sword like an extension of his own body. One focused thrust will push the razor edge all the way through the neck. Mostly empty space there anyway, if you’re one side of the vertebrae. He thinks about it. It might speed this up if he makes an example out of her.

Some part of him; not Clint, he thinks, but Ronin…the part of him that misses the carnage…wakes up. He feels the muscles twitch in his arm; his shoulder and back. A physical thrill as he tenses for the strike.

“Wait!”

It takes an effort to stop.

“No, wait!” The lady with the flower tattoos lurches forward, trying to put herself between him and her soldier.

“You don’t have to—let’s talk, okay? Let’s talk. Let her go.”

He takes a deep breath, inaudible behind the mask, and lowers the sword.

He’d almost forgotten what he came here for. Fluidly he overhands the katana, sheathing it unerringly in the scabbard on his back.

“Come with me,” she says, not quite pleading. She laces a hand though the soldier’s arm, tugs her away to mount the steps to the ornate iron doors of the old bank, her lieutenants trailing along after her, the rest of the crew parting to let them pass.

The inside of the bank is vast and echoey. Remains of expensive track lighting hang from the ceiling, busted up laser displays and sound equipment. Whatever furniture had been inside when this was a nightclub has turned out to be much more breakable than the structure itself. Mostly pushed into the corners—old booths and couches, bar stools and tables. The original stone teller booths are still intact, forming a sort of walled off interior island in the center of the cavernous space. He follows them through a little wrought iron gate into the center of it. Someone’s set up a heavy wooden table inside. There’s a bunch of maps and stuff laid on top, mixed matched chairs pulled up around it.

Flower tattoo sits down at the head of the table, the rest of them finding their seats. Clint stands at the foot of it, crosses his arms over his chest and waits.

She looks up. “What do you want to know?”

*** 

Turns out the tattooed lady’s name is something deRosa. So the gang’s name—deRosa’s Riveters, after the old Rosie the Riveter ’We Can Do It!’ poster from WW2—makes more sense now. The soldier he almost murdered is something something Costas. Ex army, he was right. He only realizes later that a good three quarters of the gang are women.

Turns out Callie was right to be suspicious of whatever the hell’s going on in Little Italy. deRosa has already lost eight people. That kind of attrition isn’t typical for gang scuffles—which tend to be a lot more posturing and talk, drive-bys and sneak attacks—not outright warfare. It didn’t take him long to figure out Costas ran deRosa’s people like infantry, careful and smart. They should have been walking all over a typical gang, sloppy and overconfident from substance abuse and power.

But whatever’s happening in Little Italy isn’t typical. deRosa talked like someone who’s got a big problem on her hands—not sure what they’re up against despite the intel they’ve been able to gather. The boss in Little Italy apparently calls himself simply ‘Commander’ and his crew ‘Company.’ Clint recognizes the intent. If this Commander guy has collected up a bunch of ex marines—that’s less of a gang and more of a pocket sized army. And if they’ve somehow managed to get hold of the kind of weapons marines have all been trained to use…

He and the Riveters had talked for a little less than an hour and agreed to meet again. He hadn’t promised them anything and he’s not quite sure what they think he’s committing himself to, but there was hope around the table when he’d done it. There’s no denying Ronin’s good to have on your side in a fight. 

Clint looks back as he leaves. Costas and deRosa are bent over the maps on the table, deep in conversation, heads close. Too close for just friends. The leader and her lieutenant formulating battle plans, trying to figure out how to survive.

A memory pushes past the blue haze into the front of his mind with startling clarity: his old handler, Phil Coulson, bent over a table piled with maps, just like that. But in a crappy hotel room in Estonia or somewhere, he’s not sure, Strike Team Delta did a lot of work in the former Soviet bloc back in the day and it all kinda runs together.

He examines the memory as he paces out into the street, turning it over in his mind, only half aware of people scurrying out of his path as he goes.

He remembers being at the table with Coulson, bending in close, maybe not quite like Costas and deRosa but sorta. A kind of shared intensity; studying the terrain of an infil, quietly picking out sniper perches. And Natasha is sprawled out in a chair by the TV, which is always tuned to some local station so they could talk back to the actors on the bad soap operas, practicing the local language. She’d be thumbing through her phone and eating those tiny doughnuts you could get by the dozen on the street out of a greasy paper bag, flicking pieces of pastry at his head that he’d catch and eat without looking up, leaning into Coulson’s space, so close he could smell what was left of his cologne at the end of a long day, and the coffee on his breath, and some subtle something that was probably just him, which smelled like calm and home, and makes Clint want to lean in a little, maybe just to feel a ghost of the warmth of his body, listening to the gentle cadence of his speech, his voice low with the lateness of the hour, raspy from lack of sleep.

Time had always seemed to stretch then, on nights like that. The three of them floating in some peaceful space; calm before the storm, safe in the eye of the hurricane, perfectly balanced, small moons orbiting one other. Family.

He stops in the middle of the street and shakes his head. _Where the hell did that come from?_

He turns off Bowery into what probably used to be Broome and heads towards the river, too restless to go back to Callie’s just yet.

He’s almost reached the water when he registers footsteps behind him and stops, knowing what he’ll find when he turns around and dreading it.


	6. The Gift

Clint doesn’t turn around. He actually considers running in the opposite direction for one brief, panicked moment. As if there’s any place he can run to where she can’t find him.

Instead he walks up to the chipped Jersey barrier edging FDR along the river and slumps over it on his elbows, head bowed, wrists dangling. And waits. Listening to the sound of the rain on the broken asphalt.

She comes up behind him, turns and leans against the barrier beside him, holding an umbrella aloft in one hand and a long black case in the other. She half turns to look at him, face smooth and expressionless, and rests the case against the wall. He meets her eyes for a fraction of a second before glancing away. He can’t risk longer contact. Not anymore.

The rain’s picked up a little, wind pushing the East River into a heavy chop, the grey of the water almost indistinguishable from the grey of the lowering sky. What’s left of Brooklyn across the river is hazy and indistinct, the broken teeth of the high-rises along the shore jagged against the sky.

The ruined bulk of the Manhattan Bridge rises up behind them from Two Bridges, soars overhead into the mist, crumbling into ruin halfway across the river, the connection into Long Island severed. The wind off the water is thick and heavy with moisture and the scent of the river, the mucky breakwater below them, a faint smell of rot from the debris pitching and roiling in the water.

He reaches up a hand to unhook the mask, pull off the balaclava underneath. Pushes back the hood. Then he tips his head back to let the rain patter down against his closed eyelids, chill and sharp. Lets it slide off his cheeks and run down his neck into his collar, clammy against his skin, corpse cold.

“You’ll catch your death,” she says.

Clint opens his eyes, risks another glance at her, slim in black, in a long dark overcoat pushed sideways by the wind. The scarlet of her hair lifts and frets in the stuttered gusts off the river.

“Hello, Natasha.”

She looks at him in that way that she has, clear-eyed, assessing, seeing everything; all the hidden shades of meaning behind the words, all the little things left unsaid. Reading him like tea leaves. The way she always has.

“How’ve you been, Clint?”

He lets his head droop, bent over the barrier, staring out at the restless water. “Oh you know. Kicking ass. Takin’ names. The usual.”

She nods, patient. “Are you ready to come in?”

He sighs, mumbles “this again,” mostly to himself. “You keep asking me that.”

“I do. You shouldn’t be out here alone.”

“ _You_ shouldn’t be out here alone. With me.” He tries to turn the simple statement of fact into a joke. “It’s raining. You’ll get your hair all wet.”

His fingers twitch at the memory of her hair in his fist on the helicarrier. When he hauled her head back to expose the long pale column of her throat. So he could cut it. There’s a whisper in the back of his mind that feels like a laugh. He’s tried so long and so hard to get Loki out. Sometimes weeks will go by when he doesn’t hear him. But he can never quite be sure he’s gone.

Clint shakes his head, raindrops flying from the damp strands of his hair. Like a dog trying to shake off the collar of his master.

“I have an umbrella,” she says. “You could have one too.”

“You know I hate it when you talk like that. I haven’t got the slightest fucking idea what you’re trying to say. I’ve told you a million times I’m not an Avenger anymore and I’m not going back with you. Ever.”

He can’t. He can’t risk it. He can’t be trusted.

“So stop _asking_.”

She seems to consider this. “Not quite a million.”

He snorts out a bitter laugh.

“I told you you’re gonna have to level out, Clint. I told you it’s going to take time.”

“I remember what you said.”

“It’s been long enough. Come back with me.”

“That’s a million and one, I think,” he says, eyes narrow against the rain.

There’s the pop of a single gunshot somewhere behind them in the Bowery. There are still plenty of guns in Manhattan but no one’s making bullets anymore. That was someone spending the last bit of a precious store of ammo. He wonders what that round resolved—a dispute, a situation, a vendetta. Maybe it was a personal end—an exit and a salvation.

“Clint…” she says, and turns to lift a hand, bringing it down on the back of his neck.

A frisson of contact jangles through his nerves before he flinches away.

She grips the back of his collar and slams his upper chest down against the concrete barrier. Shifts to dig needle fingers into the nerve point along the sternocleidomastoid, a promise of pain.

“Ow,” he complains, face in his elbows.

The pressure on his neck eases. She runs her fingers through his hair, from nape to crown. He closes his eyes.

“You’ve got a new haircut,” she says, barely audible above the rain.

“Yeah.”

“It’s terrible,” she says, nails scratching at his scalp.

“I hate you,” he says, the constant ache in his chest unwinding against his will. 

“This isn’t healthy, Clint. It’s time to come in.”

“That’s a million and two. I’m not going back. I’ve got a job to do.”

“Is that what you’re calling this?”

“That’s what I’m calling it.”

“I’ve got a better job for you. A place for you on my team.”

He straightens abruptly, batting her hand away. “I don’t belong on a team, Nat! What is it about the name ‘Ronin’ that you don’t get? I know you know what it means, we watched _Seven Samurai_ together like eight times.”

She purses her lips together, turning to look out over the water. “I liked that movie.”

She’d sat by his bed in the hospital wing of the SHIELD facility in Osaka eating melonpan and weirdly flavoured KitKats off and on for weeks while his leg healed up; bringing in boxed sushi from the convenience store on the corner and passing him cheap takeaway chopsticks to scratch down the side of his cast. By the time they let him out they could both quote all of Kikuchiyo’s lines by heart.

The ball of mucky emotion that explodes in his chest is some horrible mixture of guilt and shame and helpless anger.

“Clint—”

“Can you just leave me the hell alone?! And stop coming out here and bothering me! I’m never going back to the Avengers and I don’t want your goddamn help!”

She gives him that look like she’s maybe a little disappointed he’s suddenly making even less sense than he usually does. He’s familiar with this look. It just makes him angrier.

“I blew up the helicarrier!” he shouts.

“I get that you don’t trust yourself—”

“No, I don’t!”

“You don’t have to trust yourself. I trust you.”

“What—! You—! Are you even listening to me?!”

“It’s not for you to choose who I trust. That’s my call, not yours.”

“ _Jesus_ , Nat. You don’t know, you don’t understand what Loki said he was going to make me do to you, you have— you can’t—”

God this hurts. It’s much worse than being shot. He deflates, leans back against the barrier, suddenly needing the support; drops his face into his hands, pulls at his hair. He hates Shadow for taking him off that roof, for patching him up again. At least he knows that if he’s dead he can never be used as a tool to hurt anyone ever again.

Natasha takes a breath. Turns to face him. “I do know, he told me.”

He lifts his head. “…what…?” It comes out as more of a whisper.

She shrugs. “He was just trying to get to you.”

“He didn’t _try_ to get to me, Nat, he _got_ to me! He got _me_! All of me, there was nothing left! You can’t understand what he—!”

She reaches out, slowly, deliberately, twines her fist in the vest of his costume, and pulls. The step forward he takes feels like falling. She tugs at him again and he goes, pulled in like gravity. The cold rain shuts off abruptly as he comes under the shelter of her umbrella. She keeps pulling until he’s a step away, lets her head fall forward. Their foreheads meet and his world narrows down to unfocused pale skin and the bright blur of her lipstick, safe behind the scarlet curtain of her hair.

“You’re going to be all right, Clint.”

He closes his eyes. “Is that what you know?”

“Yeah,” she says, with utter conviction. “That’s what I know.”

They stand there for some measureless interval, rain pattering against her umbrella, together, sheltered from the storm.

She steps back, studies his face again. Satisfied, she gives him the tiniest of smiles, a fractional quirk of her lips, and bends to retrieve the case. Pushes it into his hands.

“What’s this?”

“It’s a present. For your birthday.”

Is it his birthday? He honestly has no idea.

“Is it a big gun?”

She tilts her head. “Do you need a big gun?”

“I may have promised to go stomp on a bunch of jarheads, so yeah, I could use a big gun.”

“It’s not a big gun.”

“Well…thanks. I guess.” He reaches up a hand to scrub at his eyes, drops it to meet her look.

It’s a classic Natasha look. As usual, he has no idea what it means.

“Be seeing you, Clint,” she says.

She turns with the umbrella and the rain resumes abruptly, cold and sharp. He watches until she fades into the mist, then jogs to the bridge, taking shelter under an unbroken expanse of it. He lays the long black case on the burnt out hood of a car and eyes it suspiciously. Knowing Natasha it could be anything from a tactical nuke to a live alligator. Whatever it is it’s going to complicate his life, he just knows it. Her presents are like that.

He sucks in a breath and snaps the latches open, pushes up the lid.

Inside is a bow. It’s a simple recurve. Not particularly special, just a good solid bow, well made but not fancy. Completely unlike the tactical weapons he used to use at SHIELD.

Like all good bows, even just resting in a case unstrung, it seems to vibrate, coiled and barely contained, an instrument of potential.

He feels the pull toward it like a physical force, feels his fingers lift without any input of will. Fights for a moment before giving in to touch it. Runs blunt fingers along the elegant curve of it, the moulded grip, strong and simple and somehow pure. 

He jerks his fingers back. He doesn’t want this thing. He gave up the bow when he got the sword. The sword fits him, suits him now. A sword is a weapon for a murderer. And that’s what he is.

A bow is a weapon of defense. That’s not…he’s not…

His traitor brain flashes an image of the orphanage at him.

He slams the case lid down. Goddamn it! Goddamn her! He should just leave this here for the scavengers! Just because she brought it he doesn’t have to take it! Natasha is not the boss of him, he doesn’t have to do what she wants and he doesn’t want her help and he’s told her how many times already?! He doesn’t have to keep—! It’s not fair that she—!

He takes a step away. Another.

“Goddammit!” he whirls and grabs the case off the car, shoves it under his arm to protect it from the rain, and jogs out from under the bridge. As he passes under the overpass on Market it pisses him off even more than he’s turned without thinking about it back to Callie’s. 

…if Clint had looked back he would have seen Shadow.

But he didn’t.


	7. Arrows

He spends the next week and a half teaching Callie’s kids how to lay traps and make slingshots.

“I don’t like that you’re weaponising the toddlers,” Callie says, arms crossed over her chest.

Clint reaches down for a panel of plywood, hoists it up and leans it against the metal frame he’d welded together earlier. There’s not much pain in his side at all now, comparatively. He’s trying not to think about what actually constitutes ‘healed’ in this case. He’s been back on the street before in much worse condition. Much worse. This time the assessment’s gotten all tangled up with when he has to leave here and what he’s going to do next and, like, what the hell did he even think he was doing before and can he just go back to all of that and…it…it doesn’t…

He’s not thinking about it. It’s complicated. One problem at a time.

He pulls a reel of wire out of the back pocket of his jeans and threads it through the holes in the panelling, lashing it to the frame.

“I’m not weaponising them, I’m just teaching them the basic facts of life as it currently is. It’s not gonna hurt ‘em to know.”

“They’re children. You can’t turn them into an army.”

“Hey, little kids can do a lot of damage. Didn’t you ever see _Home Alone_?”

She frowns. “This isn’t a joke, Clint.”

No it is not. He’d met the Riveters again—daRosa is down three more people. The Company had launched a couple more raids into their territory and in the past week alone she’d lost Lafayette Street all the way up to Canal. At this rate it’s not gonna take Commander long to turn his attention toward Chinatown.

And it hasn’t been like it usually is when territory changes hands in new New York. The Company isn’t talking, isn’t making deals. No one knows what happened over in Five Points because no one had made it out alive to tell. There’s something wrong with these people—they’re not gonna stop till something stops them.

Worse, there are rumours coming out of the squatters in Lower Manhattan about guns. Big guns. This is bad.

He twists off the wire and jumps down from the box, brushing the rust off his hands on his trousers.

“You can’t do everything, Callie. You’re just one person. It’s good for them to help.”

He and his brother had been dumped in an orphanage when he wasn’t much older than some of the little ones here. He remembers their first day, the two of them holding hands at the edge of the yard, a line of children on the other side of it, grim-faced, knowing that two more will mean less for everyone else. The grey faces of the adults in charge, knowing that the best they can do won't ever be enough, that the new ones will never stop coming, the knowledge draining the light out of their eyes.

No one had taught him and Barney how to survive. They’d had to teach themselves. But they’d done it and they’d made it out. Not like the ones who waited for the rescue that never came.

Callie brings up a hand to rub at her forehead. “They shouldn’t have to,” she says, voice almost inaudible.“They shouldn’t have to do this.”

Clint looks up, looks out over the cracked wall at the edge of the roof into the ruined city beyond.

No, they shouldn’t.

“We’re gonna be fine, don’t worry,” he lies. It seems like the right thing to do.

He only realizes what he’d said when Callie looks up.

“We?”

He ducks his head, turns around to get a grip on another piece of plywood. She doesn’t say anything but he can feel her assessing eyes on the back of his neck.

“And I’m supposed to take the word of a man who’s in the process of building himself a clubhouse on my roof?”

“Excuse me, you’re the one that kicked Ronin out of my room.”

“Do you blame me?”

The older ones know on some level that Mr Ronin is Clint and Clint is Ronin and that one is a guy who eats Spaghetti-Os out of a can just like they do and the other is a monster who cuts people’s arms off. But in a way that’s pretty typical of children, they don’t let reality trip them up too much. Callie says Chloe’s nightmares have gotten better.

“No.”

He grunts as he steps back up on the box, levering the panelling into place to make another wall. Mr Ronin’s shed is strictly off limits, they’d all agreed. It’s better this way.

The bow gets to stay in Clint’s room. The bow is Clint’s, not Ronin’s. Also, strictly speaking, it’s not a weapon because—hell if he knows what Nat is thinking—she hadn’t given him any arrows to go with it. Some birthday present.

“Besides,” he says, snipping off another length of wire, “you’re just jealous that I have a clubhouse and you don’t.”

She rolls her eyes. “Oh yeah, that’s it.”

“I’d invite you in to see it but of course as a girl you’ve got all, like, cooties and stuff so…”

She snorts and turns away. “Dinner’s at 6, don’t be late or there won’t be any Twinkies left when you come down.”

“Like I’d be late for Twinkie Night.”

She shuts the door to the stairwell behind her. He can hear the lock click into place.

***

Mr Ronin’s Clubhouse had turned out pretty okay if he does say so himself. In the dark it’s kinda nicer, the dim light muting the mismatched scrawl of graffiti on his scavenged plywood walls, on the corrugated plastic roof overhead. There’s not a lot of room inside but it’s enough to hold the trunk that contains the Ronin rig and his weapons, and enough room for Clint to change and that’s all it needs to do.

He’d hung up a couple of strands of solar-powered fairy lights to give him enough light to see. And there’s kind of a door—enough of a door to bolt shut anyway—but he’s left it open tonight. The ladder to his room in the attic is stowed and the stairwell up to the roof locked. He doesn’t have to worry about one of the kids wandering up here by mistake.

Clint skips out of his jeans, hopping on one leg as they get tangled up in his droopy sock. He wonders if anyone would even notice if Ronin The Death’s Head Samurai stalked the ruined streets of Manhattan on a Quest for Vengeance in a pair of off-brand button-downs. He’s never been a huge fan of Ronin’s leather pants, if he’s honest. They’re kinda hard to get into.

He manages to yank the leg free without falling over and turns around in his underwear to find Shadow standing in the doorway.

It takes him a moment to realize what he’s looking at—the dull black of Shadow’s suit blending seamlessly into the midnight sky behind him. For a second, before his eyes know what to focus on, the soft blue light tracing the planes of him is only thing giving shape to the form. That and the reflection of fairy lights in the smooth surface of the mask. This time, again, the long coat is absent, Shadow’s broad shoulders brushing the entrance to the shed. 

“Wuh—”

His tongue gets tangled up in his mouth. And it doesn’t help at all that now, apparently, he’s never going to be able to look at kevlar again without thinking about peaches.

He clutches his jeans to his chest, widens his stance, and tries to look mean.

_As mean as you can be in a pair of Spongebob boxers, dumbass._

“What the hell are you doing here?!” he blurts, trying to suppress the little voice in his head that’s laughing at him. _I mean, are the boxers even clean? Are there holes in them? Certainly the material is kinda worn out and thin. Don’t think about peaches. Dammit why did that come up?? Don’t think about come! Don’t think about up! Dammit!!_ _Shut up shut up shut up!_

There’s the faintest whir of expensive tech as Shadow raises a hand. Clint realizes there’s something in his fist. Something dangling from…it’s a quiver. It’s a hip quiver full of arrows.

There’s a long moment where the only sound is the soft filtered hiss of Shadow’s breathing behind the mask.

Shadow makes a impatient jiggly motion with his fist. Like he wants Clint to hurry up and take the quiver.

“No! I don’t want that!Why are you here?!”

“Apparently I have nothing better to do than deliver archery goods to you,” Shadow says. A hint of bitterness makes it through the throat mic.

“Hey, I didn’t ask you to bring me arrows!”

“No, you did not.”

“Well you can fuck right off with them then!”

Shadow takes a step forward. Clint’s not proud, he takes two steps back. Bumps the back of his knees into the trunk.

The soft exhalation of recycled air from Shadow’s mask sounds like a sigh.

“Take the arrows, Clint.”

He feels his eyes narrow. “That’s the second time you called me ‘Clint.’ Who the hell are you and why are you here?”

“Why do you think I’m here?”

“I don’t know! That’s why I asked you!”

Clint’s face in the mirror of Shadow’s mask looks angry and flustered and just a little bit guilty.

_There’s nothing to feel guilty about! It was just a peach! Goddammit!_

He slumps back against the trunk, the anger bleeding out of him all at once. This doesn’t make any sense. When will things make sense again? At this rate probably never. He brings up his hands, scrubs at his face.

“Honestly, Shadow,” he says through his fingers, “why are _any_ of us here?”

Shadow tilts his head fractionally. “That is, actually, the right question to ask. But I’m not the person you should be asking it of.”

Clint shakes his head. The guy’s word play reminds him of his days at SHIELD. Nat and Coulson used to talk like that when they were all Strike Team Delta. Although everyone at SHIELD more or less did it. It used to drive him crazy, the twisty turn-y shades of meaning, the layers stacked one atop another like birthday cake. He remembers Coulson and Natasha having a heated discussion while they were all undercover in a restaurant once that—although on the surface of it was about cheese—later turned out to be some sort of planning session about SHEILD’s covert operative commitment in Chechnya. He didn’t have the brain cells for stuff like that back then, and he sure as hell doesn’t have them now after Loki and about a thousand litres of very terrible vodka.

He lets his hands fall to his sides. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Shadow nods. Like maybe that’s pretty much what he expected. He takes another step forward and drops the quiver in Clint’s lap.

Clint lets his hands settle on it, runs his hands over the leather straps, touches the neat fletching of the arrows. They’re good quality. Like the bow, well made but not fancy. He looks up. “Aren’t you going to say ‘happy birthday?’”

“I wasn’t planning on it, no. How is your wound?”

“It’s fine.” _Oh god, is he going to ask to look? Because that would be—_

There’s a long suspended moment where Shadow sways forward just slightly, weight coming on to his front foot, where Clint can almost feel some focused intent behind the mask. Before he abruptly steps back and instead of whatever that was, takes a look around the clubhouse instead.

“What are you doing out here?”

“I’ve got something I need to do. I was changing. So if you don’t mind…?”

“Don’t let me stop you.”

Clint stares. Is he really going to have to put on a pair of leather pants with Shadow watching? Difficulty level +3 because maybe that unfamiliar sensation down there is the beginning of a hard on? Could this be worse?

“Turn around then,” he demands.

There’s a snort from the mask. “Really?”

“You heard me! Or you could just leave like I’ve asked you to do a million times instead.”

Shadow stares at him a moment, or, at least, Clint guesses that’s what he’s doing as the suit goes still, before he turns slowly around in the doorway, facing out towards the roof.

With a deep sense of unreality Clint fishes the Ronin costume out of the trunk.

“What is this something you have to do?”

“It’s not anything that you care about,” Clint says, wrestling with the pants.

“Try me.”

“Ugh. Fine. There’s this gang in Little Italy who’s taking over the neighborhood and they’re bad people and they may have a big gun. I’m just going to go have a look. It’s not any of your business, okay?”

“How is it your business?”

Clint stops, t-shirt halfway over his head, closes his eyes. He’s not gonna go there, not gonna think about that. He’s not going to think about how, even though he did his damndest to _not_ do it, he knows each and every one of their names.

When he opens his eyes again he finds that Shadow has half turned to look back at him. Clint yanks off the shirt as Shadow turns back around.

He puts on the rest of the gear in silence. Ready as he’ll ever be. The night’s gone still and silent around the shape of Shadow in the doorway. It’s time to go.

One problem. “Uh, hello, do you mind getting out of the way?”

Shadow is completely unmoving.

“Am I boring you? Are you asleep?” Clint represses the urge to raise a hand and knock on the armour.

“I’m going with you,” Shadow tells the roof.

“What? Why? Also, no!”

“Because it’s my turn.”

“ _Again_ , I have _no fucking clue_ what you’re talking about. Can you just—”

Shadow turns around. “You should bring the bow.”

“Wh—why?”

“Because you’re a good shot and a ranged weapon is an asset in this situation.”

“How the hell do you know I’m a good shot?”

“Maybe I’ve read your file.”

“What? What file? Are there even files anymore?”

Shadow shrugs.

Clint grits his teeth, stamping down on his frustration. He’s not gonna get anywhere yelling at a guy in a battle suit. He breathes deeply and takes a run at being reasonable. “Are you ever going to answer any of my questions?”

“No, I’m not.”

“I don’t even know why I bother to ask.”

Shadow nods agreeably. “It would save us both some trouble if you’d just stop.”

“Trouble—?”

“The trouble of lying to you. It’s a waste of my time. Well…an additional waste of my time.” 

“I didn’t ask you to be h—!”

“And now we’ve come full circle. Tidy. Are you coming or not?”

“What the hell do you mean? This is _my_ idea!”


	8. Teamwork

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friends, this is turning into the most self indulgent fan-fickiest of all the ficcy fanfics I have ever written, and I say that with the greatest affection for the genre. _What_ am I doing. For a moment I thought about retiring this story--which was only supposed to be 5 chapters long--despite the ending I’ve already written for it but then I’m like wait a minute, hold up, this is kinda exactly what fanfic is _for_ , isn’t it? All I can say is, if you’re still reading along with me at this point, then good on you mate, cheers, it’s only gonna get worse. Here we go!
> 
> Please note I have moved The Tombs to SoHo. For reasons. La la LAH

Turns out the rumours were right. The Company has a gun. The Company has a _big_ gun.

“Is that—” Clint abruptly remembers where he is and drops his voice to a whisper, “…a fucking _Howitzer_?”

“It’s only a little one,” Shadow murmurs beside him. He makes a minute adjustment to the night vision goggles he’s looking through, flipped down seamlessly over the smooth surface of the mask.

Clint’s binoculars aren’t as fancy as Shadow’s but they’re equipped with infrared and he sees well enough to wonder what the hell it is they think they can accomplish here against _that_.

He and Shadow are flat on their bellies side by side on top of what’s left of a building about a block over from The Company’s camp. At this hour of the night—morning, really—the stars overhead are dim and cold. There’s one of those weird winds up that you sometimes get a couple of hours before dawn, little gusts from some faraway storm, energy in the air. The cicadas in the scrub that’s begun to take hold in the rubble of the street are a constant thrumming background, almost as comforting as the drone of midtown traffic used to be.

And it’s dark. Dark in a way the city never was before things went to hell. The first couple of weeks after the invasion, after the Chitauri had knocked out the power grid, Clint remembers seeing people wander out at night and just stop, staring up; astonished at the vast, black-velvet vault they’d never noticed above them before, the pinpoint flare of stars—how _many_ there were.

He sweeps the ‘nocs over the ruins of the surrounding buildings, finally cluing in to where they are. The Commander’s apparently stuck his flag in what’s left of what everyone used to call The Tombs. Or the Manhattan Detention Complex, if you wanted to be strictly accurate, or you were unlucky enough to be filling out paperwork there.

Clint had read an article in the Times about this place once—the fourth, and last, ugly municipal jail in a succession of ugly jails built on the same spot, on top of a old filled-in pond, ever sinking. They called it The Tombs because, back in the 1800s, the first jail they’d built had been modeled after an Egyptian mausoleum. Or, at least, what a bunch of guys back then had thought one of those looked like; big, squat, lotus papyrus-looking columns and snakes and sun god doodads carved into the marble facade. He’d rolled his eyes at that. For a jail. _New York_ , man.

He has to admit, though, this latest incarnation of The Tombs is a actually a pretty good choice of a castle for your post apocalyptic fiefdom, all things considered. The north tower is solid concrete, the windows—if you can call them that—are narrow horizontal slits recessed back from the facade and covered in iron bars. There are big chunks knocked out of bulk of the complex from the invasion but that only makes what’s left of it look more ominous. Like a mouth full of broken teeth.

The building had always been an eyesore, some architect somewhere having gotten the idea it would look a little friendlier if they colored the concrete a sort of reddish-brown. In the daylight it’d looked like a big stack of cockroaches. Thankfully tonight, under a sinking sliver of moon, it’s just a slightly lighter bulk in the darkness around it.

Clint’s pretty sure The Company patrols this area regularly during the day. But they hadn’t seen anyone other than a few solitary guards walking the tower tonight, their torches a brilliant flare of green light in infrared. After all, what kind of idiot would be stupid enough to attack the Commander’s castle by himself at four in the morning?

 _Don’t answer that,_ Clint thinks.

The gun is at the top of the north tower, which is still largely intact. How the hell they’d gotten it up there he doesn’t want to know, but he’s gonna guess there’s more than one engineer in Commander’s gang. The rubble on the street below has been shifted about strategically to limit access to the building from the ground.

Fortunately, Shadow had turned out to be almost as good as Clint was at sneaking from rooftop to rooftop. Even carrying the recurve—which wasn’t easy if he does say so himself. They’d hardly set foot on the ground at all on their way over from Chinatown. 

The way over had actually been…kinda fun, if he’s honest; jogging across the rooftops, clambering over rubble at Shadow’s side…I mean, it was nice to have a hand up when you needed one. Not that he…

_Um._

“You call that a _little_ one?” Clint whispers, trying to focus. The shells for the thing would likely be as big as his forearm.

“One oh five millimetre,” Shadow says, “probably the M101. It’s old. The ones that were left were used mostly for avalanche control in National Parks, before.”

Clint blinks. “Really?”

“Really.”

“That makes it seem…I dunno, nicer?”

“They shoot mountains with it. Don’t underestimate the damage it could do to one of the buildings around here.”

Clint was thinking more like a crowd of people. Or a crowd of people _in_ a building...

“What’s—um, do you know the range on one of those things?”

Shadow hums. “Some of the modern variants could make targets at eighteen klicks. This one, maybe a little less.”

A little less…Callie’s place is only a couple of miles away.

He shakes his head to get rid of the images.

“Where the hell did they get artillery?” he growls. Manhattan had shot everything it had at the Chitauri—for _weeks_ afterward—with very little effect. And after everyone had run out of ammo, the alien bastards had sent wave after wave of sky vespas to blow up whatever they’d been shooting it _with_. He hadn’t thought anything this big would have survived.

“You’d be surprised what’s out there if you know where to look.”

Clint glances at Shadow. Like that’s not equal parts ominous and mysterious. He bites down on the urge to ask, knowing he won’t get an answer.

Shadow flips up the goggles. “So. What’s your plan?”

“…plan?” Clint cuts his eyes, caught looking.

“You had an objective for coming here, what is it?”

“Um…” Clint’s not so much a strategy guy anymore, he’d be the first to admit. His current idea of tactics is to throw himself through a window and fight anyone inside that stands up.

He makes a show of pushing back the hood, buying himself a moment to think.

The breathy escape of air from Shadow’s mask that Clint’s pretty sure is an exasperated sigh is starting to become familiar.

“I assume you’ll want to take out the gun at least?”

“The—”

“It’s a clear threat. It completely overturns the power dynamic of the local—”

“Are you crazy? And how the hell am I supposed to even get over there? I forgot to bring my suction cup 1960’s Batman shoes, okay? You can see what this place is like on the ground—and then I’d have to fight my way up, what? Like, twenty something floors?”

Not that he wouldn’t give it a try. He’s done stupider things. But that had been before Shadow and Callie and Nat and sobriety.

“Good thing you have a ranged weapon,” Shadow says. He reaches out a hand and taps the bow.

Clint stares. “You think I should shoot a howitzer with some arrows? That’s your plan?” He taps the quiver. “These are broad heads. They’re for shooting, like, Bambi—not that I would ever shoot Bambi—but not for—”

“If you can disable one of the gun’s components it’s extremely unlikely they’d be able to replace it.”

Clint’s beginning to feel like a party pooper. He shakes his head. “The bow doesn’t have the power for it, it’s a thirty five pound draw at best.” A kid’s toy compared to the weapons SHIELD used to design for him.

“Hmm,” Shadow says. He turns to flip the goggles down again, scanning the roof. “Or…this might be interesting…”

“What?” Clint squints through his own binoculars knowing they aren’t as accurate or powerful as whatever Shadow’s system is.

“Unless I am very much mistaken, the neat little pyramid by the left tire of the gun carriage is their supply of ammunition.” Shadow voice contains something that’s a little smug and a little gleeful. “Amateurs,” he says.

“So?”

“So those are HE shells. They have fuses and a bursting charge. That many all at once would take out the gun, eliminate what may possibly be their entire arsenal, and blow up a good portion of that tower.” Shadow pauses. “In fact, we should probably move back a little. ”

Clint just stares at him blankly, minutely shaking his head, waiting for him to make sense.

Shadow flips up the goggles and turns, exasperated. “You didn’t used to be such a blunt instrument.”

Clint frowns. “What the hell does that mean? And dammit, who _are_ you?”

Shadow pushes off his elbows, rolls over to sit up. “No one of consequence,” he murmurs. Almost to himself, Clint thinks.

It startles a laugh out of him. _Shadow is a Princess Bride fan? The Man in Black part fits anyway._

“I must know,” Clint says with a terrible Spanish accent.

Shadow cocks his head. Clint can tell he’s trying to resist but he just can’t quite do it.

“Get used to disappointment,” he says.

Clint laughs, quietly delighted. _Who is this guy that the thought of blowing up a building makes him almost playful?_

“Yeah, so what’s your amazing plan? I hate to spoil it for you, but this bow isn’t gonna deliver an arrow with enough punch to set off those shells, even if they are HE. How are you—”

Shadow holds up a finger. When Clint falls silent he drops his hand to rummage around in one of the big pockets on his hip. He retrieves and holds up a small metallic object that Clint can just barely make out in the darkness. In the other hand is a thin spool.

“Explosive device,” Shadow says. And in the other hand, “…wire. And you have a bow and near perfect aim. All the ingredients we need to solve your inconvenient cannon problem. Hand me one of those arrows.”

Clint pushes himself up, fishes an arrow out of the quiver. “You’ve forgotten something.”

“Have I?” Shadow carefully secures the small circular object to the shaft of the arrow with the wire.

“Well, two things. That’s gonna throw off the stabilisation of the—”

Shadow twists off the wire and hands the arrow back. “You can correct for it,” he says, utterly confident.

Clint bounces the arrow in his hand, feeling the weight of it. Some part of his brain has already started the calculations necessary to correct its flight, he can feel them bubbling away back there somewhere behind his eyes. It’s a sensation he’d almost forgotten. It feels great.

“How do you know that, Shadow?” he says slowly. “How do you know _me_?”

 _He’s got to be someone who used to work for SHIELD. Someone…had he said, that had read his file? Did Clint know him? Were they friends? He can’t remember past the…past the blue…and Loki’s voice, and the…_ He shakes his head. _No, that can’t be it. He’d murdered most of the people he cared about at SHIELD when he blew up the helicarrier. The people who knew him were all dead, all dead, and they—_

Shadow watches him from behind the mask. “What did you call me?”

Clint blinks. The little surge of embarrassment the question causes is precisely calculated. It washes over all that other stuff, pushing it aside.

Shadow waits. Clint’s sure he’s entirely prepared to sit there all night waiting, if necessary.

“…Shadow…” he mumbles. It feels stupid saying it out loud like that.

“Why that name?”

“Because you’ve been following me around for months. Like my shadow.”

“Have I?”

“Don’t play dumb, I know you’re not. I’ve seen you. Black battle suit, black coat. Kind of…helping. Why do you do it?”

“Another good question for the wrong person,” Shadow says. There’s a faint purr of machinery as he gets to his feet. “Let’s get this done, our window’s closing. You said two things?”

It takes Clint a minute to get back from wherever it was he’d gone to. He climbs to his feet, muscles stiff from laying on the roof.

“Um…oh yeah. I can’t see in the dark.”

“Ah.”

“There’s no scope for the bow. And I can’t hold the infrared and shoot at the same time, so unless you’ve got—”

“I have a scope.”

“What? Where? How many pockets do you have on that thing anyway?”

“The functionality is built into my helmet.”

Clint holds out the bow. “Okay, so you do it.”

Shadow huffs out a little snort of filtered air. “That’s not part of my skillset.”

“Fine. How is this supposed to work then? Are you going to try to spot for me? Because I don’t—”

“I’m going to give you my helmet. Come here.”

Clint feels his eyes go round. _Is he really going to take off the—_

He starts forward, a quivery little thrill going through him. 

Shadow leads the way to the other side of the roof, behind a couple of big slabs of broken concrete. They’ve still got line of sight to The Tombs but now they’ve also got shelter from the blast.

He reaches out to catch Clint’s shoulders, turning him firmly around to face the tower.

“Here’s how this is going to work,” he says. Shadow’s hand stays where it is on Clint’s shoulder, heavy and implacable. “I’m going to stand behind you. You will put on my helmet, using its internal telemetry to sight that gun. Aim for the pile of shells. Then give the helmet back and I’ll set off the device. Very simple. Do you understand?”

He nods slowly.

“And Clint, if you make any attempt to turn around— _any attempt_ —I will abort the mission. I will also taze you and leave you on this roof for the patrols to find tomorrow. If you survive that—which is doubtful—you’ll never see me again. Are we clear?”

Clint swallows. “Yes, but—”

The hand on his shoulder gives him a little shake and Clint’s voice trails off, breathless at the small reminder of just what, exactly, is standing behind him. What Shadow could so easily do to him if he chose to.

“I need to know if you can do this. Tell me,” Shadow says, close.

“Y—yes…okay,” he says more firmly. “I won’t look, I promise.”

Again there’s that series of unlatching sounds and the hiss of escaped air as Shadow takes off the mask. This time Clint hears Shadow’s sigh at his first breath of unfiltered air right behind him. He swears he can almost feel it on the back of his neck. A shiver goes through him.

The helmet is handed around his side as Shadow reaches around the other to take the bow out of his hand.

Clint holds the thing in both hands, rubs a thumb over the smooth black surface. The urge to turn around is almost— _almost_ —overwhelming.

“Alright?” Shadow asks, and Clint’s suddenly not sure what he wants more at that moment—to see what Shadow looks like or to hear his real voice. The idea of having that low, calm voice in his ear is doing something to him.

_What the hell?_

He breathes out. Nods.

“Put it on,” Shadow says, “take a moment to get used to the display.” There’s more unlatching sounds, some rustling.

Clint slides the helmet over his head. He has a wild moment of thinking It’s just like the blindfold back in Callie’s attic. He can’t see anything, it’s completely black.

“It’s not working, it’s—”

“Wait,” Shadow says. He shuffles even closer, close enough that Clint can feel the surface of the suit along back of his thighs, his ass and shoulder blades, as Shadow places his hand at the join between Clint’s shoulder and his neck. There’s no glove on that hand. Now Clint can actually feel the gentle cadence of his breath on his neck. The fine hair at his nape lifts.

What are you doing?” he chokes out.

“There’s a biometric lock on the gear. It’s keyed to me, I have to be in contact for it to function. Ready?”

Clint feels Shadow shift his grip slightly, and the helmet comes to life.

“Woah—!”

“Steady,” Shadow says. “It can take a little getting used to.”

Displays surround him, taking up every part of his field of vision, charts and numbers and graphs and grids in glowing light. The helmet seems to disappear and it’s hard to tell whether all that data is something he’s looking at or whether it’s being input directly into his brain. He turns his head gingerly from side to side—the roof is visible in every detail, everything as clear as if it were noon.

“This is—”

“It’s Stark tech. Some of the last of it. Pretty cool, right?”

I mean, it’s awesome, yeah. But he’s not entirely sure it’s better than the solid plane of Shadow’s bodypressed against his back.

“Alright. Now look at the gun…good. Now focus on looking closer. You see how it works?”

Whatever he just did told the mask to zoom in on the Howitzer. He can see the scratches on the metal. The pyramid of ordinance underneath the carriage looks like he can almost reach out and touch it. 

“Target acquired?”

“Yes, sir,” he says without thinking about it.

Shadow presses the bow into his hand, hands over the arrow. Then lets his hand drop to Clint’s hip. Keeping him steady.

That is…super distracting. He’s not gonna think about how distracting that is right now.

…he’ll, um, definitely probably think about it later, though.

_Focus, Clint._

He raises the bow. The part of his brain that does these things moves into that quiet space he goes to whenever he’s got a bow in his hand, pulling Clint along in its wake. He’d thought maybe this was something Loki had burned out of him—it’s with a sense of wonder that he discovers it’s all still in there. He breathes in, taking the first pure, untainted breath he can remember getting in over a year, and breathes out confusion, fear, exhaustion--letting go. Like slipping beneath the surface of a still, clean lake. He feels his breath even out, his heart slow.

“Good,” Shadow murmurs in his ear. “Very good. In your own time, Clint.”

Shadow’s voice is like the push of wind over the surface of water. Clint feels his senses unwind outward, aware of the night wind, assessing speed and direction, sensing rather than calculating how that will affect the arrow in flight. There’s a fraction of an instant when he’s afraid the shifting telemetry of the helmet will interfere with the calculus going on in the back of his mind, but he finds that rather than conflicting, they somehow merge and make it even better, even clearer.

He nocks the arrow and draws, letting that perfect tension hum along the muscles of his arms, his shoulders, his back; held and anchored along the plane of Shadow behind him. The helmet shows him what he needs to see, the exact spot most likely to set off the detonator on the bottommost shell of the pile.

And then he stops looking and lets go of the bow string. An instant later there’s a faint tinny click as the broad head lodges in its target, the sound probably amplified by Shadow’s helmet, but he doesn’t need to look to know it’s gone exactly where he needed it to go.

He lowers the bow, takes in a huge lungful of air and lets it out slowly.

“I’d forgotten how good you are at that,” Shadow says softly.

Clint relaxes back into Shadow’s strength, wanting an instant to savour the warm floaty feeling that always fills him when he shoots. So grateful to find it still there. All this time, waiting for him to come back.

 _Yeah, me too_.

Shadow’s hand tightens on his hip, almost possessively, and the floaty feeling shifts abruptly into something else. Shadow’s other hands slides away from Clint’s neck, over the curve of his shoulder and the helmet goes dark. Suddenly he’s back in Callie’s attic. Except this time Shadow is much closer, this time his breath is on his neck and there, the slightest point of contact, maybe just the tip of his nose, or the edge of his lips, tracing the big artery up the column of his throat. Clint lets his head fall back and Shadow’s hand leaves its trajectory down his arm and curls into his side, pushes across his belly, fingers splayed.

Some tiny sound escapes him, is swallowed up in the darkness of the helmet. His hips stutter forward, an involuntary motion that he couldn’t have stopped if he'd tried.

He doesn’t want to try. He wants—

Shadow shifts and moves. Clint feels the helmet lifting off his head, cool air rushing in, but he doesn’t open his eyes. There’s the now familiar sound of latching and toggling and Shadow steps back. Reluctantly, Clint thinks. He’s pretty sure he’s not wrong about that.

Shadow’s hand lands lightly on his shoulder, tugs at him. “Clint—”

He opens his eyes and shuffles back a step, accepting responsibility for his own balance again, readjusting his weight on his feet. It feels like waking up. He turns. Whoever had touched him has disappeared back behind Shadow’s armour, the smooth black surface implacable, remote.

Shadow lets him go, bends to retrieve his gauntlet and bracer and pulls them on. “This way,” he says quietly, moving behind the concrete slab, “You’ll want to cover your ears.”

Clint steps over to the meagre shelter and sticks his fingers in his ears.

There’s a soft click.

The sky explodes.

There’s an instant of impact, of heat and noise and percussion, before he’s whisked off his feet, slammed to the ground, debris falling like rain around them.

It seems to go on for a long time before the orange-white glare and the noise die down. Clint lets his fingers slip from his ears, opening his eyes, to find himself curled into a tight ball on the roof with Shadow fitted around and over him like a shield.

“You—” he coughs, mouth full of brick dust, “you were maybe right about moving back a little.”

Shadow’s armour hums as he uncurls himself from around Clint’s body to sit back on his heels. “I may have slightly underestimated the explosive power of those shells.”

Clint rolls over and looks up, chips of concrete crunching under his back. “You think?” He can hear the crackle of fire across the street, the shouts of angry voices. Their concrete barrier has largely disintegrated.

Shadow reaches out inquisitive fingers to touch his face.

“Ow,” Clint says.

“You caught a few splinters, I think. Come on, we need to go.”

Shadow rises smoothly, reaches a out a hand to pull Clint to his feet.

There’s a sharp pain in his thigh, he gasps and claps his hand on it, stares at his fingers as they comeaway bloody.

“Can you walk?”

Clint hobbles a few steps, testing the leg. It hurts but it’s not too bad, probably nothing structural. It’s gonna mess with his parkour, though. “I’m not sure I can take the same route back to Callie’s.”

“Hmm. Maybe you shouldn’t go back there right now anyway. Dawn’s not far off, it wouldn’t do to risk being seen. As far as these idiots know, the shells blew themselves up. I think it’s wise to keep it that way.”

Shadow looks up, over at The Tombs, dancing red firelight reflected on the dark surface of the mask.

“Come on,” he says, “I know a place.”


	9. Clean Up

Shadow reaches down a hand, clasps Clint’s forearm to help him up and over a tumbled concrete hill created when a bunch of gas mains exploded in the intersection of what is probably Mulberry and Kenmare.

Clint lets himself be hauled up although, honestly, he could have climbed up on his own just fine; the gash in his thigh is not that bad. He feels a bit damsel-in-distress accepting all the help—but also maybe just a little glowy and warm that Shadow is looking out for him. It’s nice.

He thinks maybe Shadow feels bad about miscalculating the blast radius of Commander’s ex howitzer and letting Clint get hurt. Like that’s somehow his responsibility, which is just weird. Or maybe he’s just annoyed and doesn’t want to be slowed down, who knows. It’s tough to read someone’s body language though ballistic plate and a throat mic. Anyway, Shadow’s apparently made it his mission to get Clint wherever the hell they’re going as efficiently and painlessly as possible, which is fine with him. 

They cross over the ruins of a wide street—Broome—stepping around downed traffic lights and burned out cars, heading down Mulberry to Grand. That’s according to Shadow, anyway, who almost certainly has a map overlay inside the helmet. It’s clear he’s looking for something specific and Clint’s content to trail along in his wake while he searches.

The city is taking on that sort of expectant quality it gets really, really early in the morning; that still and eerie hour or so right before dawn. Already the sky is lightening to indigo overhead, rolling back the cold black of the night sky, sweeping out the stars.

It’s about the time of night when a couple of guys in head-to-toe black stealth suits should probably get off the streets.

Shadow edges cautiously around the corner of a building, turning into Grand. He come-hithers Clint before disappearing into a staircase, heading down. Clint meets him at the bottom on a little landing that’s strangely free of debris before a heavy door. It looks like the kind of entrance shops in the old part of town used to have that led directly into coal storage in the basement. The door doesn’t have a handle, though, or, actually, any indication that it opens at all.

“This is ONiels on Centre Market and Grand,” Shadow says, unlatching his bracer. He hands it to Clint while he strips off the glove.

Clint maybe remembers the place. One of the oldest pubs in Manhattan. They’d called it Callahan’s when it opened in the 1800s. He looks back up the staircase, thinking he can just make out the cherry red paint on bits of the facade in the wreckage of the block above.

“Are we going for a beer?” A beer would be pretty good right now, actually. His mouth still tastes like brick dust.

Shadow hums, studying the chipped brick by the door. He raises his hand and presses it to a specific spot, which shimmers to resolve itself into a key pad.

“Woah. How’d you know that was there?”

Shadow ignores him. He punches a complex sequence of numbers into the pad then removes his hand. The pad disappears.

The door slides open revealing a black echoey darkness beyond. There’s the drip of water somewhere.

“Okay that’s not creepy at all.” Clint squints, trying to make out details in the unrelieved gloom.

Shadow toggles something on his remaining gauntlet and light bursts from it, a blue-cold, narrow beam. He motions Clint through and reaches behind him to do something to the door, which slides shut again. The darkness is absolute except for the thin beam of light from Shadow’s cuff.

“Seriously, Shadow, where are we going?”

“That’s classified,” he says, sweeping the flashlight around the basement.

“Are you kidding me? Is that supposed to be some sort of spy dad joke?”

“Maybe,” Shadow mumbles, distracted. The back and forth of the flashlight stops as he seems to locate whatever it is he’s looking for. He steps up to the back wall, probes the debris stacked against it with his gloved hand.

“We’re going to 240 Centre,” he says over his shoulder, “what’s left of it.”

…240 Centre. The address seems familiar. Wasn’t that…?

“The old Police Building? But, ONiels isn’t in the—”

Shadow turns around and looks at him. He gets the impression, somehow, that he’s grinning behind the mask. “Secret tunnel,” he says.

“Seriously? That’s real? I thought it was just an urban legend!”

“It’s real. Cops like bars. They especially like bars they can get into and out of without encountering either their boss or inconvenient members of the public wanting to interrupt their drinking time. The tunnel from the HQ basement under the street to ONiels was sealed sometime after prohibition, but it’s always been here. Even after they converted the old NYPD HQ to condos in the 80s.”

Shadow moves aside some planking and old corrugated iron sheet to reveal an even blacker hole in the far wall of the dark basement. “This way. Watch your head.”

They walk though in single file, stooped in the narrow tunnel, their footsteps echoing off the arched brick around them. The air is musty and cold, the path before them leading downward.

“The tunnel goes under Centre Market up into the basement of the Police Building. It’s the only way into the building now—everything at street level is just a pile of rubble. There were cells down here when it was a working HQ, they were converted into storage mostly, but a few apartments were put in on this level.”

Clint remembers the place as a fancy old marble building with a huge cupola thing on top of it, with a bunch of greek looking columns and stuff. And a big clock. He’d never been inside because it was a posh gated association and they would never in a million years let a guy with messy hair wearing a purple t-shirt and jeans in.

Shadow stops at another door. He raises his hand and another small panel appears. This one he just puts his thumb on. The door swishes open, like star trek.

Surely turn of the century cops, or even fancy condo associations don’t have swishy star trek doors, Clint thinks. _Seriously, who is this guy he’s following around in the dark?_

Shadow steps inside, there’s a click, and the lights come on.

 _Actual lights_. 

Clint stares up in amazement. He’d forgotten what it was like, being able to see effortlessly inside buildings without windows. The hum of the fluorescents, what had once been just nasty generic office lighting, now seems like a miracle.

Shadow is looking at him. “Generator,” he says.

He opens his mouth. Closes it again. He’s getting tired of asking questions Shadow’s not going to answer.

Shadow walks off down a white featureless corridor without bothering to look back. Clint obediently follows after him.

They twist and turn past several blocked off passages until they enter a wide hall which ends in a dead end with a door on either side. The pad beside the doors here is visible, and again all it needs is Shadow’s thumbprint to open.

The lights come up as the door closes behind Clint and they’re in…an apartment. A really _nice_ apartment; all recessed golden light and clean lines and tasteful marble accents. And it looks…normal. Nothing busted, no ragged gaps in the ceiling, no bullet holes in the walls—Clint can see beyond the short hallway that there’s like…a couch…and little tables and stuff; pictures on the walls. And…lamps. And a vase.

It’s _clean_. It doesn’t look real.

Clint brings up a hand to rub his eyes, grainy from lack of sleep. He’s not sure why he feels like crying all the sudden.

He looks up and, again, there’s the sense that Shadow is staring at him from behind the mask. Evaluating him. As if Clint can actually feel his heavy regard, the weight of his eyes.

“Nice place,” he says, inanely. Even his voice sounds scratchy.

Shadow nods.

“Do you live here?” Somehow Clint gets the sense that Shadow would fit in just fine in a place like this.

There’s a soft snort though the mask’s filter. “No.”

“Oh.”

“Take this off,” Shadow says. He gestures at pretty much all of Clint.

“What?”

“You’re covered in debris. Take off your clothes.”

“… what! No! You can’t just—what about you! You’re covered in—more worse debris! Why do I have to—”

Shadow calmly sits down on one of the long benches on either side of the hall and starts unlatching his boots.

Clint knows it’s probably just sleep deprivation and exhaustion and all but it’s with a profound sense of unreality that it slowly dawns on him that he’s going to see _Shadow’s feet_.

“Today, Clint,” Shadow says, not looking up.

Clint props the bow against the wall and manages a controlled collapse onto the bench on his side of the hall.

“This is nuts,” he mutters to himself, bending over, starting to work on picking the knots out of the laces of his combat boots.

He sneaks a glance over at Shadow who is fastidiously unbuckling and unlatching opposite him with perfect efficiency.

Shadow stands just as Clint’s levering off Ronin’s leather pants—bane of his existence, dammit—trying not to reopen the gash on his leg. He looks up, betrayed. The only things Shadow’s removed are his high tech boots and his gauntlets, his feet still covered in some sort of neoprene booties.

“Hey! If I have to take off everything why do you get to—”

“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Shadow says. “When you’ve finished, help yourself to whatever’s in the kitchen.”

He walks off into the living room, disappearing around a corner. 

“I’m not taking off my underwear!” Clint yells after him.

He gets the pants off and lobs them at the pile of Ronin’s gear crumpled against Shadow’s tasteful maple shoe bench or what-the-hell-ever. He leans back, tipping his head back against the wall behind him.

What is he doing. Could his crappy post apocalyptic life get any weirder? Now he’s down to Spongebob underwear in the basement of what used to be the NYPD’s jail dungeon in the fancy bachelor pad slash lair of mysterious superhero—or supervillain, he’s not sure which—Shadow, who apparently knows him from SHIELD or maybe not, but who won’t tell him who he is and also, he really is kinda disappointed that he won’t get to see his feet.

“I’ve gone crazy,” he tells the ceiling. Even as he says it, though, he knows it’s not true.

_The world’s gone crazy. You’re just living in it. And that’s new. Different. ‘Cause you were only surviving in it before._

He dips his head, raises his hands to scrub at his face.

Yeah, okay, might as well get on with it then.

He pushes off the bench and pads in his bare feet across the expensive wooden floors of Shadow’s living room, through some fancy arch and a panelled dining room, though some other room that he has no idea what it’s even for and, finally, into the kitchen.

Stainless steel surfaces sparkle under recessed lighting. It’s not bright, though, most of the light coming from little spotlights in the ceiling and long, narrow inserts along the walls and the sides of the kitchen island. This kitchen is big enough to hold a dance off in. Clint shakes his head.

The movement catches his eye, and he looks up at his reflection in the big burnished surface of a massive refrigerator. There’s a guy in a pair of battered boxers staring back at him. His hair looks like a weasel slept in it. There’s dried blood smeared along one leg and bruises blossoming along his side that are going to be truly spectacular tomorrow; cuts and scrapes on his neck and his face, hollows under his eyes. The corded muscle of his arms and chest is edged and too lean, ribs standing out starkly underneath. The samurai sleeve tattoo he only half remembers getting a couple of months ago writhes up his arm in green and black, dark against his pallid skin, the death head’s empty eyes staring back at him accusingly.

 _Shut up_ , he tells it and opens the fridge.

And comes _this_ close to fainting.

It’s full of food. I mean, the fridge isn’t actually on, of course, so its not cold, but it’s stacked with non perishables like a cabinet. Clint reaches in and picks up a packet of beef jerky. Behind it is a full bag of cheetos. And an apple. And a snickers bar.

 _Oh my god_. He picks up the candy and rips open the package. The concentrated scent of sugar and caramel and dense gooey american chocolate fills the air, as if it’d been struggling to be free of the packaging all this time.

Clint takes a huge bite and moans. This is honestly better than se—

Shadow walks into the kitchen. He’s still wearing the helmet mask but all the armour and belts and pouches and stuff he had on over it are gone. He’s in the nanotech under-suit that must have been beneath the gear all along. It’s black, traced with thin blue piping at the sides of his neck, curling over his shoulders to disappear under his arms, remerging from the other side over his biceps to stop at the end of the sleeve, just under his elbow. The same bright blue spirals down his thighs, behind the calves to end well above his ankles.

Clint swallows the candy, not tasting it. _Feet_.

The under-suit is formfitting, like compression wear, with heavy ridged seams for reinforcement sewn into the material at stress points. It skims over Shadow’s broad shoulders and trim belly like thick paint, hugging muscular thighs and…

…and it doesn’t leave a lot to the imagination, frankly. Clint jerks his eyes back up, blinking, trying to make them less big and round.

He feels like he should say something but his mind has dissolved into static. He takes another big bite of the candy bar instead.

Shadow makes an impatient motion. “I don’t keep clothes here. Can we move on?”

“You look like Evil Daft Punk,” Clint says around a mouthful of chocolate. It’s a desperate and probably futile attempt at humor to mask the excruciatingly embarrassing thing that’s happening beneath the way too inadequate cover of his cartoon character boxers.

Shadow pushes past him and reaches into the fridge, extracting a bottle of water.

“Did you drink something?”

“No, I—”

“Drink this,” Shadow says, shoving the bottle into his hands. “Then go take a shower. You can eat later, I want to look at your thigh.”

Clint backs up to the kitchen island, cocks a hip on the counter. “Why, Shadow, this is so sudden,” he says in Southern Belle voice. “Although isn’t it kind of sexist for you to assume that just because you bought me dinner, you can—”

Shadow shuts the refrigerator door and turns to march out of the kitchen.

Clint’s brain slips out of defensive mode and actually registers what he’d just said.

“Did you say ‘a shower?’”

“Have you forgotten what those are? I can believe that given your—”

“You have a _shower_?”

“It’s from a cistern. There’s no water heater of course, but it works well enough.”

Clint has been cleaning up in buckets of river water mostly. When he bothers. It got bad last winter when he stopped caring about that sort of thing for a while because of the nightmares and the—he’s not going to think about that now, that was bad, but it’s over—and anyway, he’s gotten better at the regular washing thing at Callie’s, lining up with the kids for his turn at the sort of trough thing she’s sets up every couple of days…

… but an actual _shower_?

The hot scratchy feeling is back behind his eyes. He looks away so Shadow won’t see.

Shadow sighs, a soft little puff of breath.

“Take as long as you like,” he says, not unkindly.

Clint stuffs the rest of the candy in his mouth and follows him out of the room.


	10. Patched Up

Clint looks down at his erection and sighs. This is really not fair. It is literally a _cold shower_. This thing has no right to be here.

I mean, the solution to the problem is obvious. Except _no_. And honestly, it’s been so long since this was even an issue he’s a little afraid it wouldn’t even work.

He can’t go out there like this. How much longer can he stall, though? How much water is there in a cistern?

 _Idiot._ You just _had_ to look at Shadow’s butt all the way back from the kitchen, didn’t you? And his legs, they looked strong. And his shoulders. And he could almost make out the shift of muscle in Shadow’s back under the jumpsuit as he walked. The banded tendon of his forearms. The strength in his big capable hands.

His _fingers_. 

_La la la laaaaaaaaah. Shut up brain, not helping!_

Clint switches off the water and leans his forehead against the cool tile of Shadow’s lux bathroom, all dark stone and subdued lighting. With, like, this rain shower thing in the middle of the stall. And real soap. And shampoo that smells like sawn wood and spices or something. He’s clean like he hasn’t been in he can’t remember when, every millimetre of him scrubbed and sluiced down. Maybe that has something to do with the…

Ugh. _Anyway_.

He looks around for a towel and spots one on a towel rack that is way too far away in the huge bathroom. Walking across the cold tile helps with the…problem. Looking in the mirror over the sink kind of finishes it off.

Clint barely recognizes the guy staring back at him from the glass: hollow-cheeked, blue shadows under his eyes. There’s a cut on his forehead, a streak of red that highlights the pallor of his skin, stretched too tight over bone, all the softness bled out of it. The sharp jut of his jaw looks scratchy under a couple day’s worth of stubble, and his hair—he’s not gonna think about his hair, there wasn’t much he could do with it on the best of days.

He pushes at the bit of it that hangs over his forehead. Then pushes it back to where it was. He wishes his hair were longer; long enough to hide the startlingly vivid eyes underneath. He hates the way those eyes look. Too big for this version of his face. Too vulnerable.

The last of the desire he’d felt in the shower evaporates. Yeah, right. Like Shadow could ever be the slightest bit interested in… _this_.

He turns away.

Putting back on the boxers is super unappealing. Callie tried, she really did, but as hard as she works—as hard as they all work at the orphanage—to keep everyone safe and fed and as clean as possible, doing laundry, well, it just kind of gets shuffled to the bottom of the pile. They have to make their own soap and everything. It’s a pain.

He looks around. There’s a robe hanging on some piece of modern-looking furniture that has obviously been designed just to hang robes on. Clint eyes it. It looks expensive. He doesn’t want to mess up Shadow’s stuff. I mean, this is his robe, isn’t it? Who else’s?

He bets Shadow would make even something as stupid as a bathrobe look good. He wonders what that v of skin would look like just under his neck if the robe was open a little. How the big tendon in his neck would stand out if he turned his head. He bets he…

Clint scrubs his hands over his face, breathes out hard. Then he pads over to the bathroom door and opens it up a crack.

“Shadow,” he calls, “should I put on the—”

“Yes.”

Okay then. The robe is soft and clean. It’s made out of some fabric that’s thin but also heavy; kind of satiny. Smells a little musty, though, like it hasn’t been worn in a while. He wonders how often Shadow comes to this place. What he does here. He’s pretty sure it isn’t feeding and patching up busted old vigilantes like Clint.

He runs his hand though his hair and pushes open the door.

Shadow is leaning against a long credenza that runs along one wall in the bedroom beyond, no doubt exercising extreme patience. The bathroom is some kind of embedded en suite thingy, a small part of the palatial bedroom that surrounds it, which contains not only a bed but, like, a couch with chairs and a sort of recessed desk thing and he doesn’t know what else. Why do rich people want so _much_ , he wonders. The bathroom has three sinks. Who needs more than one sink?

The bed is enormous. It looks even bigger and more ominous set up as it is, raised on some sort of dark wood platform. There’s a duvet and lots of pillows and stuff on it, all neatly made up, in various shades of warm grey, from dove to charcoal. Soft. Shadow looks weird next to it, hard and all in black, wearing the mask.

There’s another one of those robe holder things in the corner. Shadow’s repurposed it to hang the pieces that make up the battle suit from it; it looks like another version of him—a shadow of Shadow—without the head. All the gadgets and gear and stuff that Clint guesses he keeps in the suit’s pouches are piled up next to it on the credenza.

“I used your toothbrush,” Clint says, bluffing his way though the awkwardness of standing in front of a gigantic bed with Shadow staring at him, wearing nothing but his soft bathrobe.

“Thank you,” Shadow says.

Clint shifts his weight from foot to foot, makes a show of looking around the room some more. There’s nothing so pedestrian in here as a lamp. The light comes from the same sort of dim, spotlighty recessed stuff as the fixtures in the kitchen. It makes the whole room seem kind of soft and cool and shaded. Quiet dark in the corners. Calm.

So why’s his heart beating so fast?

“Um, so is this—?”

“Clint, come here and sit down.” Shadow points at the bed, his inherent supply of patience apparently having just run out. He gets up, picking up a med-kit from the credenza and stands there, waiting.

Clint edges closer to the bed and stops. “But are you sure you want to, I mean, I don’t want to mess up the—”

Shadow walks forward, forcing Clint to walk back. The backs of his calves bump into the edge of the bed platform. He kinda falls and sits at the same time. 

Shadow places the med-kit on the bed beside him and flips it open. Then reaches out to gently tip Clint’s head up with a knuckle under his chin, studying the cuts on his face.

The easy intimacy of Shadow’s hands on him is achingly familiar—it reminds him of before. On some deep unexamined level, it’s something he craves—and it’s also something he knows he’ll never have again. 

_He doesn’t want to think about that. He won’t think about that. He wo—_

Hill had showed him the surveillance footage of Phil Coulson dying on Loki’s spear. She’d liked showing him, liked watching Clint watching it, seeing him suffer. Coulson had been her friend. Clint had killed a lot of Hill’s friends the day he blew up her ship; the day he let Loki in. Killed her friends and members of her crew. He hadn’t blamed her for making him watch, although it’d torn a hole in his heart that he sometimes thinks he’s still bleeding from.

_Don’t think about it don’t think about it…_

_Who are you kidding? You think about it all the time. For a while it was the only thing you could think about._

The reflection of his face in Shadow’s mask is making him sick. He jerks his head away.

This time the release of air through the throat mic is most definitely an exasperated sigh.

“I honestly don’t get your objection to necessary healthcare,” Shadow says. 

“I’m fine,” Clint grits out. “I don’t need you to—” He leans forward, gets his feet under him to rise—

A heavy hand on his shoulder pushes him back to the bed. “This will just take a mo—”

Adrenaline explodes into his system. Clint looks up, eyes hot. The muscles in his legs, his back and arms jerk taunt, hands curling into fists.

Shadow abruptly lets him go, takes two steps back, hands out, placating. As if he were trying to calm an animal. 

He’s murmuring something, a string of nonsense reassurance, something like “It’s alright. Clint, it’s alright, it’s alright…” 

Shadow has deliberately pitched his voice lower, calmer. It pisses Clint off even more. He’s being _handled_. Coulson used to do that when Clint first joined SHIELD: young, half-feral, with a learned and, by then, almost instinctual desire to destroy older men— _especially_ ones in suits—and especially _especially_ ones with power over him. It had taken Coulson years of patient effort to earn his trust. To help him heal from those wounds, to help him forgive.

Shadow doesn’t fucking get to do it. _No one gets to do that anymore_.

He gets to his feet.

Shadow backs away again, giving him space.

“Clint. We’re going to be all right. I want you to breathe with me. If you can just breathe with me, just try…”

Clint marches on him, not sure what he’s doing. Shadow stands his ground, a rock for the rage to break against. He turns his head and Clint realizes he’s done it so Clint won’t have to stare into the mask again. It’s a poor defensive choice, exposing his neck.

The deliberate kindness makes him want to murder something. He whirls away, stomps over to one of the bedroom’s stupid fancy tables, swipes up the art thing made of heavy glass sitting on it and lobs it at the far wall.

The thing bounces off the wall and hits the floor with a thud. There’s a sharp crack as it splits neatly in half.

Clint stares at it. That was less satisfying than he…

“Clint—”

He looks over at Shadow, then follows the inclination of his head to look down. Blood has soaked though the soft fabric of the bathrobe where it lay against his thigh. A thick trickle of it has run the course of his leg, snaked over the arch of his foot to form a small, neat pool of scarlet on the clean grey rug under his feet.

That had been the last part of Hill’s surveillance tape—the long stretch of silent, empty corridor after they’d taken Coulson’s body away. A pool of blood on the deck had been the only thing left; slowly drying. The tape kept recording, faint sounds of explosions somewhere off in the background, distant impacts nudging debris down from the rafters. Dust falling slowly, like thin rain. He’d stared at it for hours.

The fight goes out of him. He sags as the adrenaline recedes, thins.

Shadow watches him silently for a moment, then turns and disappears into the bathroom. There’s the sound of running water. He comes back out with a wet washcloth. Hands it to Clint.

Clint takes it. It’s clean and warm.

“That was my fault,” Shadow says. “I know better than to box you in like that, I’m sorry. Sometimes I forget we’re not supposed to know each other.”

Clint freezes, the washcloth cooling in his hand. _What? What does that—_

“I remind you of someone,” Shadow says. “Who?”

Clint folds the washcloth over, bends to scrub at the blood on his shin. “He’s dead. I don’t want to talk about it.”

_Don’t think about it don’t think about it don’t think about it…_

“I understand. But I need you to let me see to that wound. It may require stitches. If it becomes infected… you know the supply of antibiotics left in the city is extremely limited. Can you let me do this?”

 _No_. But… dammit, he’s _tired_. Tired of fighting. Why does he have to fight all the time? What is he even fighting for, anyway? He honestly doesn’t know anymore.

“The blindfold made it easier for you before.”

He straightens sharply, shock rolling through him. _The blindfold_. The scent of summer in the darkness, and tart fruit, and the hot, liquid slide into surrender. Shadow’s hands on his face, holding him still, keeping him just where he wanted him, taking…

Desire rolls over and wakes up. It pulls on combat boots, throws open the door to the room where all of Clint’s other emotions have been fighting one another all damn night and proceeds to kick them in the head, one by one, until it’s the only thing left standing in the room.

The blush starts somewhere on his chest, he can feel it rising up his neck, staining his cheeks.

Again that calm assessment from Shadow. The room is utterly silent except for the cadence of his breathing.

“Come lay down,” he says.

This is _crazy_. There’s no way he should do this. He won’t.

 _GO,_ Desire says. _Don’t make me kick you in the head._

Shadow crosses to the bed, bends to gather up the items that spilled out of the med-kit when Clint knocked it to the floor getting up.

Clint folds and refolds the washcloth. Glances up at the bed. Tries not to feel intimidated by it. _This is such a bad idea._

He breathes out. Shadow’s not going to let this go. And he has to admit he’s got a point about gangrene. He’s just gonna have to be cool. _Be cool be cool be cool. You can be cool, Clint._

 _Nope_ , Desire says.

Shadow straightens with his reassembled med-kit. “Okay?”

Clint takes another deep breath. Crosses to the bed and climbs into it, crawling up to settle himself against the pillows piled against the headboard. It seems like a long way to crawl.

Shadow sits down beside him, one knee bent under him. 

Clint realizes he’s fidgeting. He clasps his hands together to still the movement.

“Aren’t you going to go get the—”

Shadow reaches down and plucks up the tie of Clint’s bathrobe, slips the knot and slides it free.

Clint’s mind stumbles; he can feels his eyes widening, his mouth falling open. The robe remains shut but there’s nothing holding it there. It’s abruptly clear to him just how little remains between him and Shadow’s touch.

Shadow smooths the fabric between his hands, pulls it taut. He looks up.

“Change your mind?”

Again that hint of mischief, of playfulness. Almost a challenge.

Clint very deliberately closes his mouth. He gets his chin up and tries for causal.

“Are you going to take off the mask?”

“Is that what you want?”

“What do _you_ want, Shadow?”

“What I want isn’t relevant here. Right now I am more interested in what you need. You need to be still so I can clean these cuts. You need to sleep for eight hours, minimum. You can stay here as long as you wish, there’s food—which you’re not getting enough of—and it’s safe—a word I don’t think you remember the meaning of anymore. Take this time to heal. You can let yourself out when you’re ready to go.”

Clint shakes his head.“I don’t understand. Why are you doing this? Why won’t you tell me who you are?”

“Because none of that matters. Because knowing who I am won’t change anything. It can’t.”

Clint bites his lip against another question that will only be dodged or ignored or answered with a riddle.

“Take the mic off too,” he demands. He says it to get a bit of his own back, but once it’s out in the air he realizes he wants it. Wants it as much as the mask.

“No. That stays.”

“But I want to hear…to hear _you_ , not—”

“Then listen,” Shadows says.

Shadow leans forward and the bed dips under him, a slow, heavy shift that feels seismic, inclining Clint towards Shadow’s body, an inescapable attraction, inevitable as gravity. Shadow places the tie against Clint’s eyes, smooths it against his skin with broad fingers. Then slips a hand under his head, through his hair against the pillow to wind it around firmly, and then again, tying it off at his nape.

There’s a tightly stretched moment before Shadow’s palm, warm, open, is placed in the middle of Clint’s chest. Before he presses him back into the pillows.

Again there’s that jangle of electricity at his deliberate touch, nerves and synapses that Clint hasn’t needed or wanted since the world went to hell firing into new life.

Clint recognises the sound of latches being undone, the escape of air that means Shadow is taking off the mask. Feels the shift of his weight, a soft thump, as he places the helmet on the floor.

Somewhere above him Shadow inhales deeply, lets the breath out slowly. The ambient noise of the room presses in as Clint’s senses strain outward, stretched, waiting. The faint whisper of circulating air, the low hum of the lights, the measured pace of Shadow’s breathing.

Clint’s fingers twitch at his sides. He can’t seem to settle, can’t seem to hold still. Before, in Callie’s attic, in the dark behind the blindfold, he was able to stop. But this time he finds himself still fighting, unable to back down. The cumulative effects of the tug of war of his emotions, the lingering disruption of the adrenaline in his system, the urge to push Shadow away—too intimate, too close—at war with the urge to pull him closer, to give into whatever this weird thing between them is—this crazy, improbable thing that means a stranger in a mask has somehow managed to slip past defences no one else has even come close to crossing, somehow making him feel safe and wanted.

He realizes he’s jiggling his foot when he becomes aware of the slight vibration in the bed. It’s anervous tell he’d thought had been completely trained out of him. Sergeant Blakely from RTI class would be appalled. He forces his foot to still.

He’s being watched, he can feel it. Evaluated. Analysed.

“You remember what I told you would happen if you attempt to take off the blindfold.”

Shadow’s voice is low and soft. More human without the mask. Pitched deep, a raspy whisper. It’s not a threat. Just a simple statement of fact.

Clint’s chest heaves on an indrawn breath. _‘….unless you want me to bind you,’_ Shadow says in his head. His cock twitches against his leg.

Shadow gets up. Clint strains to follow his footfalls, to interpret shifting and rustling sounds; breathing harder in anticipation of his return, the movement of the bed as he sits.

Something heavy and coiled is placed at his side.

“You may touch,” Shadow says.

Clint brushes a finger over it but he already knows what it is. It’s rope. It’s the tactical rappelling rope that used to come standard in field kits at SHIELD. It’s woven, heavy, with the cool suppleness of a snake. Strong.

Shadow waits, unmoving. Time stretches. Clint can’t seem to catch his breath.

The decision he makes feels like free fall. He slowly, deliberately, reaches up for the blindfold.

Shadow’s fist closes on his wrist.

He can’t quite follow what happens next, some part of him denying that it’s happening at all. His wrists are contained as Shadow applies the rope. What he’s doing is complicated, less like tying and more like… building. Like he’s creating something with the line, twisting and winding, knotting and weaving—turning the raw material of the rope into something else. Into a tool handcrafted for a specific purpose, to be whatever it is he thinks Clint needs. It involves his wrists but also his forearms in some way that feels like a pattern and he has a fleeting moment where he wonders what the sleek black rope must look like against the pale canvas of his skin. Shadow’s hands are precise, moving without hesitation, without haste. It goes on for some time.

Finally his hands still. Shadow pushes a finger into one side and then the other of what must now be something like a pair of cuffs, checking the hold; tight but not too tight, unyielding but not hurting. Secure. The bed shifts again as he reaches up, doing something with the other end of the rope.

He settles back into the bed at Clint’s side. There’s a long pause where Clint is sure that his heartbeat is audible, the loudest sound in the room. Then Shadow leans in.

“Breathe,” he says, lips barely brushing the fine hair of Clint’s neck, just under his ear.

The rope goes taunt, pulling Clint’s wrists up, elbows bent over his head, shoulders and fists pressing into the pillows piled up at the head of the bed.

Some tiny helpless sound escapes him. He can’t hear the sounds of Shadow tying off the rope over the thudding of his heart. He pulls at the ties, strains against them, testing. There’s no give. He’s not going anywhere.

 _“Oh god_ ,” he breathes. It’s all the commentary he can manage; he can almost feel his capacity for rational thought draining away, along with all the pent nervous energy, all the doubt, all of his capacity for making poor choices, all of his options. There are no more options, there are no more choices. Only whatever Shadow decides to do to him.

The erection he can feel pushing up against the bathrobe is almost incidental. 

Shadow huffs out a little breath. It sounds smug.

There’s a rustle as he picks up the med-kit.

Clint’s not sure what he expected would happen next but first aid wasn’t it. Regardless, that’s what he gets.

Shadow goes over every cut, every abrasion slowly and thoroughly, almost as if he’s not aware of Clint at all, only the living landscape of his body. His touch is gentle but firm, careful but also unselfconsciously possessive, as if Clint is his to do with as he likes, and what he likes right now is putting him back in order. As if Clint were some kind of cherished object that has been damaged and must now be put right. Some priceless work of art that must now be repaired with utmost care.

Clint squirms and shifts through all of it, responsive to every lingering touch. He floats, utterly relaxed but no longer sleepy, hyperaware of every movement Shadow makes but unconcerned about what he’s actually doing, or what he’ll do next. The small motions of Clint’s body, his sighs, the small sounds he can’t keep back—there’s no keeping, there’s no back—are all part of whatever symphony Shadow is playing out upon him, a rhythm and a harmony they create together; perfect complements of one another.

He doesn’t know how long it goes on. Time has ceased to mean anything. Shadow will stop when he isfinished and not before. It’s not up to Clint to worry about that.

Shadow’s hands lift from his thigh. He guesses the cut there didn’t need stitches after all. Or maybe it did and he missed that part.

There’s a soft click that’s probably Shadow closing the med-kit, a rustle as he set it aside. It feels wrong that Shadow has stopped touching him. Clint waits.

Shadow’s hand comes down at his collarbone, slips under the robe, pushing it aside as he skims his hand down Clint’s side. Clint squirms as cool air follows in the wake of that slow slide, the robe now pooled at his side. Then Shadow slowly, deliberately, repeats the motion on the other side, before his hands lift, weight shifting back on the bed.

“Look at you,” he murmurs.

Clint tips his head back, writhes against the rope, the muscles in his arms and abs shifting, flexing, as he strains against the binding, just to feel its hold on him. His full cock bumps against his belly, wet and slick at the tip. The restraints remind him that he doesn’t have to be embarrassed to be exposed in this way. That it’s right for Shadow to look. That it’s all okay.

“I want you to sleep now,” Shadow says. His voice is rough, husky under the throat mic.

Clint nods. In some distant floaty way he can agree that sleep is probably a good thing.

Shadow’s weight shifts and the rope holding Clint’s wrists suddenly has some slack in it.

“Wh—?” It comes out as a mumble.

Shadow catches his hands as the rope releases them, eases them down to Clint’s chest. Then he slowly, methodically begins to untie the cuffs.

Some part of Clint, the part that’s beginning to wake up, thinks this is wrong. He should say something.

The rope comes away. Sensation rushes back into his arms, his hands. Hot and crackly, like molten electricity. He gasps.

“Easy,” Shadow says. “It’s alright. Come here.” He tugs at Clint’s shoulders, guiding him down, laying him out, head cushioned against one of the fluffy pillows, settling the robe back into place. Then he pushes at him gently, getting Clint to turn partly to his side, away from him—

…and lays down behind him, pulling Clint into his arms.

Of all the things he could image Shadow doing to him—and by now the waking up part of his mind has created the most _amazing_ list—this is by far the most shocking, the most unexpected.

Shadow pushes an arm under his neck, cradles Clint against his chest, his broad, warm hands on Clint’s wrists, gently massaging the circulation back into his skin.

Shadow’s warmth, the gentle cadence of his breath on Clint’s neck, the rhythmic motion of his hands, have rendered him boneless in seconds. He doesn’t want to move ever again.

 _Wait wait wait hold on what the hell_ , Desire demands.

I mean, Desire has a point, Clint thinks. He didn’t imagine the hunger in Shadow’s voice.

“But…don’t you want—”

“No.”

“But—”

“I told you what I want isn’t relevant right now.”

Clint thinks about this for a minute. While he does so he shamelessly snuggles farther back into the shelter of Shadow’s body, even though he can’t really feel much through the neoprene suit.

“But what if _I_ want you to—”

Shadow places a finger over Clint’s lips. “Shh,” he says, “sleep.”

There’s no way in hell, Clint thinks.

It’s the last thing he remembers. 


	11. The Battle of Mott Street

Clint walks down Hester Street with a butterscotch DumDum tucked into one cheek, Ronin’s gear in a duffle slung over his shoulder, Nat’s bow in one hand, and the kind of optimistic glow you only get on a full belly and about nine hours of uninterrupted sleep.

Shadow hadn’t been there when he’d woken up. The first time. Or the second. It would have been interesting if he had although, on the other hand, if he had there’s a chance there’d have been… A Discussion. Clint’s not quite ready to talk about whatever the hell happened with the rope, although he’s pretty sure he’s never going to look at SWAT the same way again.

He raises one hand, for about the millionth time, to look at the neat diamond pattern of bruising that crisscrosses the underside of his forearm and wrist. The bruises are already beginning to fade. He has mixed feelings about that. The fading part, not the bruising.

Um… is that weird?

It’s maybe _a little_ concerning that Shadow has turned out to be some sort of chocolate box of things that unexpectedly turn Clint on. I mean, let’s count ‘em. Fruit, for one. And fingers. And…was the rope thing just all the touching or was it the actual rope? He might have to think about that one a little more. What else? Oh yeah, that low raspy voice in his ear.

He shivers.

Should he add first aid to the list? What about feet? Eh, it’s probably just that he’d like to see any part of Shadow that isn’t covered in neoprene and kevlar. I mean, they were nice feet and all but…

He shifts the lollipop to the other side of his mouth, resisting the urge to crunch down on it, making it last. He’d taken Shadow’s invitation to raid his fridge literally, had wandered around his apartment eating Babybel cheeses and bizarrely flavoured Pringles for as long as it took him to figure out he wasn’t gonna learn any more about who Shadow was or who he was working for by poking through his stuff. For one thing, there wasn’t anything personal at the safe house beyond, like, generic toiletries and stuff. No clothes, no papers, no forgotten ID card with his photograph on it, too bad.

The only thing he knows about Shadow that he didn’t know before is that he’s a _Princess Bride_ fan, seems to like blowing stuff up, has some weird commitment to field-based medical care, and is very, very good at tying knots.

_Shut up, self. Don’t judge me._

Clint squints up at what he can see of the late afternoon sun—definitely on its way down behind lowering storm clouds, threatening rain—and picks up his pace. He maybe spent too much time trying to wash the bloodstains out of Shadow’s robe in the kitchen sink. And more gluing the art thing back together with some rubber cement he’d found in a drawer. At least he hadn’t had to waste time trying to figure out Shadow’s defense system on the way out—getting out of the safe house hadn’t been a problem, all the hocus pocus Shadow’d gone though to get in wasn’t necessary going the other way. 

He wants to get back to Callie’s by nightfall. There’s no telling when Commander will make his next move. Although, if what the Riveters say is true, the Company has so far only attacked at night. Which is good but also bad. Good, because any assault against the orphanage means they’ve got the home court advantage. And everyone in the place knows their way around in the dark—all the nooks and crannies, all the hiding places and bolt holes in the quirky old building—although that has less to do with good tactical training and more to do with the fact that kids are curious. And they keep running out of candles.

On the other hand, attacking at night points to some kind of some technical superiority—night vision tech at the minimum. He hopes it’s the kind of tech he has—looted out of a cut rate army supply store in Brooklyn—and not the kind Shadow has; black ops stuff clearly liberated from some government lab.

Maybe losing the howitzer will hold them back some. He can hope. At least now if they want to assault people they’ll have to do it in person.

Clint turns into Mott Street aware that he’s being watched. Probably just squatters wondering if the duffle has either food or weapons in it, although most of the neighbors—if you can call them that—have taken off to sunnier climes since the skirmishes started between the Riveters and the Company. Still, you never know. He keeps his pace brisk but casual, face forward. It doesn’t stop him from checking on the defences they’ve installed on this side of the street, in the approach up to Callie’s; the traps, the fortifications. Here an innocent pile of rubble rigged to collapse on a tripwire. There, an actual pit with spikes crafted from a crater left in the street from Chitauri energy weapons. The kids had all been surprisingly good at thinking up interesting ways to booby trap the approaches to the orphanage. And the interior as well. He’s hopes whoever came up with _Home Alone_ , which everyone’s seen sixteen times, is doing well, wherever they are.

Clint stops at the front entrance to the CMA. He hasn’t actually been through this way, preferring to come in via the roof, but he might as well test out the new system.

He walks up the steps slowly, eyeing the heavy lintel over the door, balanced on a crumbly bit of brick that looks pretty natural, he has to admit. You can barely see the string that’s attached to it.

He knocks.

There’s some rustling behind the double doors. Possibly the patter of small feet.

“Friend or foe?” someone with a very small voice box squeaks.

He can see eyes through the crack between the doors.

“Friend,” Clint says.

“What’s the password, friend?”

“Michaelangelo.”

“Wrong!”

“Um, Leonardo?”

“Wrong!”

“Um…”

_Damn, he can never remember all those stupid turtles._

“Starts with an ‘R,’” the squeaky voice says.

“Oh! Raphael!”

“That’s it! You did it Mr Ronin! Good job!” some tiny person cheers behind the door.

There’s the sound of locks turning and clicking and a bunch of little hands fumbling up the crowbar barring the door before it swings open.

Patty looks up at him, grinning. “I knew you could do it!”

Clint tries to look stern. “Should we really be giving out hints for the password?”

The assembled kids around the door appear to think about this for a moment.

“We’re helpers,” Lizzie says finally.

“Well, in that case…” Clint slings the duffle around, unzips it and pulls out the bag of DumDums. There’s a collective indrawn breath before the knee-high crowd explodes into squeals.

“Make sure everybody gets one!” Clint shouts over the din. 

He wades through the crowd of screeching cherubs into what everyone calls ‘the parlour.’ It’s actually the ground floor of the expansive hall that’s been repurposed as general living space. Inside is a couple of apartment buildings worth of couches and cots and futons and stuff grouped together with miscellaneous chairs and tables and ottomans and things to create a sort of communal living/sleeping space. Some of the older kids have their own rooms farther along in the back, but all the little ones sleep here.

In the middle is an enormous carved oak partner’s desk piled with toys and maps and gear and whatnot. Callie’s desk.

Which Callie is sitting behind, in a little pool of mellow light, the green glass bankers lamp in one corner modded to take a candle. Lieutenant Costas is sitting in one of the guest chairs in front of the desk. They’re drinking tea out of small fragile cups from an ancient Chinese tea set Callie’d found in the vault. Or maybe Callie’s out of tea again and it’s just hot water. Clint doesn’t really follow why Callie needs to preserve little rituals like offering tea to people who show up on her doorstep but there you go.

They watch as he winds his way though playpens and drifts of blankets and tennis balls and leggo towers to stop in front of the desk.

Lizzie runs past him to offer a lollipop to Callie. And, shyly, one to Costas.

Clint takes his out of his mouth. “Hello.”

Callie looks over at Costas. “Aubrey, this is C—uh, Carl.” She pauses for an instant and smiles. “Mangy Carl. Mangy Carl, this is Aubrey Costas of the Riveters.”

Clint shoots Callie a look. Yes, he did see that episode of _Brooklyn Nine Nine_ , thanks.

Costas quirks a lip. “Hi, Carl.” She studies him in that way career military types have, cataloguing height, weight, reach, general fitness. About Ronin’s size and build, she’s probably concluding about right now.

Clint looks back. Costas has a bandage wrapped around her upper arm and a bunch of bruises trailing down the side of her face. Several of her fingers are taped up. Things clearly have not been going smoothly for the Riveters.

“Aubrey would like to talk to Ronin, Carl. Have you seen him?” Callie takes a delicate sip from her cup.

“How would I know where Ro—”

“It’s going to rain tonight,” Costas says.

Clint sighs against a sinking feeling. “I, uh, think I can find him. If you want to wait.”

“I don’t mind,” Costas says, “it’s good tea.”

“Come up to the roof in twenty, then.” Clint walks off into the hall leading back into the building and the staircase to the attic, a sense of inevitability dogging his steps.

*** 

The intel Costas gave him is good. The Company attacks just before midnight.

Clint is kneeling at the edge of the orphanage roof, the night vision binoculars trained on the street. There’s movement down there at the edge of their range. The Company isn’t being particularly sneaky. Why should they? What can a bunch of kids do against a battalion? Even if they do have a cut-rate samurai who used to be Hawkeye.

There’s a light rain falling, not enough to obscure his vision, just enough to deaden sound and get everything thoroughly soaked. And keep the Chitauri away. He’s grateful for Ronin’s hood, keeping the water out of his eyes. Clint’s wearing only those parts of the Ronin gig that make him look like Ronin tonight. Mostly for the body armour and the ability to act as a decoy, an obvious target, to draw fire away from the kids. But he’s left a lot of it back in the trunk. The leather mask because it scares the kids. And the greaves because they fuck up the action of the bow. And seriously, forget those leather pants, who’s he trying to impress anyway?

Behind him, crouching behind the protection of what’s left of the short wall on the edge of the roof are most of the orphanages’ older kids—the preteens and teens. A couple of them have bows, scrounged from sporting goods stores or bartered for food, more for the look of the thing than because he thinks they’ll be able to do much on a couple of weeks worth of training against what are probably at least partially armoured troops.

All of them, however, have slingshots, and most of them are damn good with them, too. Almost all of the kids have been using them for months, hunting rats in the ruins of Chinatown. All Clint’s done is upgrade their gear with improvised bent metal shafts and medical tubing, turning a toy into something deadly. The rubble surrounding them provides an endless source of ammunition.

Clint lowers the binos and creeps back to the cover of the edgewall. Twelve pairs of bright eyes stare back at him, all in black hoodies, faces smudged with soot and dirt and shoe polish making them hard to see in the dark.

“Alright,” he says, low, “listen up, you guys.” Everyone huddles up and leans in. “Remember how we trained this, okay? Everyone keep your cool until you can see your target. We want to give the traps a chance first, right?” There’s a nodding of heads. “Stay behind cover as much as you can. They maybe don’t have guns, or maybe they do. If they do they probably don’t have a lot of ammo, but we don’t know. Remember slingshots don’t work against guns, yeah? So if they start shooting, you hide. If they try to get a light up here, you hide. If things get scary, run to the vault and keep the little ones safe. I’ll come get you out when it’s over. Everyone got me?”

Another chorus of nods. He holds their eyes, each in turn, looking for doubt, watching them deal with their fear. He can’t help but be a little proud of what he sees—they’re afraid but they’re also committed, the knowledge of what they’re fighting for clear in their eyes. He reaches out and squeezes Kayla’s arm, feeling the tremor under his palm. “You’re doing awesome, you’re gonna be great.” Clint watches as the girl firms her mouth and raises her chin; gives him a shaky but determined nod. He gives her a smile and turns to Jayden. “You got this, Captain. Wait for my signal, okay?”

Clint turns away at Jayden’s nod and crouch-runs back to the stairwell door. He slips inside and depresses the call button on the walkie talkie clipped to his vest. “Callie, all secure down there?”

“ _Affirmative. Operation Lion-O is go._ ”

Callie hadn’t been in the military as far as Clint could tell, but she took to combat discipline like she was born to it.

“Awesome. They’re on their way. I’m gonna give ‘em five to hit the front edge of the traps. So showtime in ten to fifteen, alright?”

“ _Copy that. Callie out._ ”

Clint grabs the improvised switch plate off the wall and slips out the door, using an old box to climb up to the roof of the stairwell enclosure, the electrical cord trailing behind him. He flattens himself out on his belly and lifts the binoculars, scanning the street.

There’s a rumbling crash of masonry as the forward edge of Commander’s forces hit the tripwires. The screams are extremely gratifying. There are shouts and scuffles as the invaders mill around trying to figure out what happened in the dark. With any luck they’ll think it’s an accident for a few more seconds.

Clint rolls over to check the other side of the block. So far there’s nothing happening on the cross street. A simple frontal assault in an urban op is unbelievably arrogant, but the Company’s stupidity is the orphanage’s gain. These meatheads have gotten sloppy, accustomed to rolling over people whose first inclination is to try to talk it out—to compromise—vulnerable without the leadership and organization to resist weekend warrior bullies whose only goal seems to be intimidation, and tearing shit up, and making people suffer just because they can. 

He can almost feel the shivery anticipation from his little gang of teenagers, invisible in the darkness of the roof, as another wall collapses out on the street. Hopefully on as many of these assholes as possible.

There’s a couple more screams as the line advances to the spike pit. More shouts in the dark. He honestly thought that wouldn’t work. Maybe not all of them have night vision.

After that the Company seems to give up on the element of surprise as torches flicker on, small pools of light in the blackness up and down Mott Street. There’s more shouting and the squad firms up, then breaks into a run, predictably going for the shock and awe, closing the distance to the orphanage as fast as possible. The fastest runners race up the steps where the lintel over the door promptly collapses, big ragged chunks of granite raining down from the rig installed on the upper floor. As the front line screams and goes down the people right behind them skip back out of the way to escape the avalanche and stumble into their companions still flooding into the cleared area in front of the now blocked door.

Bingo. Hot box. _Morons_. 

Clint stands up and screams into the darkness, “Thunder! Thunder! _Thundercats!”_

The chorus of “ _Hoooooooooooooh!”_ rises up from the roof, from the inside of the building, splits open the darkness as Clint toggles the switch plate to the generators, and searchlights mounted on the eaves under the roof flood the street with brilliance.

“Fire!” Jayden shouts. A rain of rocks and chipped stone from the kids’ slingshots hits the street and the milling and confused gang below. The kids keep it up in waves, swiping up handfuls of rocks from the piles at their feet, the less skilled ones are drawing and firing as fast as possible, freeing up the ones who know what they’re doing to carefully sight and aim. His ace snipers are using big steel ball bearings looted from automotive shops all over lower Manhattan. Clint watches a man go down with a clean shot right through the eye. He raises the bow and scans the crowd.

There. Some camo idiot goes for the gun on his hip. He’s dead before his hand touches the holster, an arrow through his throat. Clint methodically draws and shoots, draws and shoots, targeting anyone who looks like they might have a weapon more lethal than a baseball bat. Bodies begin to pile up in front of the door.

Still, they’re outnumbered and despite his best efforts to get more, he’s running out arrows.

A gunshot comes out of nowhere and one of the kids on the roof screams and collapses. “Cover!” Jayden yells and everyone drops.

Clint one-hands it off the stairwell enclosure and hits the roof, running. It should be impossible to see past the floodlights below up to where the kids are. That means Commander’s been smart enough to put someone up high with a night vision scope after all. The kids are sitting ducks up here. _He’s got to find that gun_.

He catches a glimpse of a muzzle flash from the roof of a building behind him, across an alley. The bullet throws up chips of roofing right where Clint’s feet were before he threw himself to the side and rolled desperately out of the way. He hits the wall on the edge of the roof hard, shakes the spots out of his eyes, gets his feet under him, up on the wall, and leaps—

…Clint hits the ledge running along the edge of the building across the alley, scrabbling for a handhold, kicking against the brick, desperate for a toehold. He manages to drag himself up and over as another shot takes a chunk of concrete out of the wall beside his head. Then he’s on his feet again, running. The erratic path he’s taking may be enough to keep the sniper from plugging him—if they’re stupid or half blind or maybe drunk. Still, there’s no other option. H _e’s got to take out that gun_.

Someone on the street sends up a flare. Hellish red light arcs over the top of the building, throwing everything into blood-red and black contrast, revealing a crouching figure in desert camo kneeling at the far edge of the roof with a rifle, surrounded by darkness.

Clint sprints across the roof, watching as the sniper sights him _—too far away, you’re too far_ —the black dot of the barrel moving to center— _you’re not gonna make it_ —right between his eyes. He’s not gonna make it. _You’re not gonna make it, you’re not gonna make it—_ every muscle in his body tenses to leap and—

One of the shadows in the corner behind the shooter steps forward and punches the sniper in the head.

Clint skids to a halt as the body falls, the rifle rolling out of its grip. Shadow kicks the sniper again for good measure. The body goes limp.

Clint doubles over, gasping for breath, heart beating out of his chest. “Sh—Ssh—what—?”

“You really are an idiot,” Shadow says. “I mean, they said but who woulda believed you’d pull shit like this. You’re crazy, Barton, you know that?”

Clint straightens up, still panting.

“Shadow?”

Shadow cocks his head to the side, rain sliding down the surface of the familiar black mask, long black coat streaming out behind him in a sharp gust of wind. “You gotta concussion or something? You should get back over there before these punks overrun your base.”

“But—”

“Go. You got trouble comin’, pal.”

Shadow bends to scoop up the sniper’s rifle. Clint turns reluctantly and trots back across the roof, the flare sputtering overhead, a surreal crimson strobe before it finally goes out, plunging the roof back into darkness. Poised on the edge of the building to jump the alley back to Callie’s, Clint looks back over his shoulder, but Shadow is gone.

“Mr Ronin! Mr Ronin! Help!” some small, frantic voice rises up out of the darkness, shrill over the noise of the ongoing scuffle in the street.

Clint grits his teeth and jumps.


	12. Commander

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friends, last week in the US was no picnic. There were a couple of days in there when I wasn’t sure the good guys were going to prevail. It made finishing this chapter in particular tough. But we did it. _We did it._ Hopepunk is back on the menu. Onward!

Clint lands on Callie’s roof with too much momentum behind him, skids through one of the puddles on the slick surface, and hits the side of the stairwell enclosure with a thud. He’s just got his breath back when he’s surrounded by an anxious herd of teenagers.

“Mr Ronin! They’ve got the—!”

“They’re going around the back of—!”

“We’ve got to—!”

“Mr Ronin!”

“Mr Ronin!”

“Shh shhh shh!” Clint hisses, motioning everyone into a crouch. There hasn’t been another flare, and his little band of stealth adolescents should be invisible in the darkness of the roof, but he can’t be sure the Company doesn’t have another sniper out there somewhere.

“Alright, alright, huddle up!And one at a time! Where’s Jayden?”

“Here, sir!”

Clint spends half a breath boggling that someone’s calling him ‘sir.’ That’s almost weirder than the Mr Ronin thing.

“Good, okay, everyone just calm down a minute, alright? Who’s hurt?”

“Me!” Susan says.

“Susan got shot!” someone warbles.

“Shhh shh! Keep it down! Susan, lemme see.”

Susan, twelve if she’s a day, holds out one skinny arm. Someone’s sacrificed their shirt to improvise a bandage.

_Oh please don’t let it be bad, please don’t let it be bad…_

He unwraps her arm. There’s a nasty streak of torn flesh but the shirt’s absorbed most of the blood and the bleeding seems to have stopped. 

“It’s okay,” Susan says, lip trembling. “It just glazed me.”

“It what?”

“Glazed me. Like doughnuts. I’m okay, Mr Ronin! I can still fight!”

Clint wraps up the arm again and hates himself for putting these kids in harm’s way. He resists the impulse to pat her on the head like Cindy Lou Who and squeezes her hand instead.

He looks around. “Alright, who’s Susan’s buddy?”

“I am, Mr Ronin!” Some kid, unidentifiable under a black hoodie and greasepaint, steps forward.

“Awesome. You two take care of each other, okay? Stay behind the others. We’re going to get that wound taken care of as soon as we can, Susan, alright? You’ve just got to hang on a little longer.” He looks around his squad, meeting their eyes. “We’re going to be okay, alright? We’re all going to be okay.”

The kids huddled around him nod in unison, like kittens in one of those videos that used to be on Youtube. One of them reaches for Susan’s hand. Someone else throws an arm around her skinny shoulders protectively.

Acutely aware of the rising clamour on the street below them, Clint forces himself to give them a moment to breathe together before he turns to Jayden. “Let’s have your report, Captain.”

Jayden is practically bouncing. “Sir! They’re found the side exit! They’re trying to break into the building!”

“Alright, show me. Everyone else get back on the wall. Collect up your ammo, fill your pockets. We might have to move. And stay low! And quiet!”

Clint and Jayden creep over to the edge of the roof, right above the side exit to the building he’d hoped they’d disguised better than they apparently had. Fires are burning in scattered patches out on the street, molotovs kids have tossed from the upper stories, mostly smoke now as they burn through their fuel. Clint peers over the edgewall of the roof just in time to see four goons from the Commander’s squad break the door down. A chorus of screams echoes from inside the building.

“Shit!” Clint hisses. He stands up, reaching back for an arrow.

The quiver is empty.

_Shit shit shit shit shit—_

A tiny hand yanks at the hem of his shirt.

Clint looks down into a pair of big brown eyes, startlingly vivid, surrounded by eye black. Clutched in one of the girl’s tiny fists is an arrow.

It’s a shitty arrow, one of the hobby ones, underweight and so out of true it’s little better than something he could have broken off a tree.

It’s all he needs.

“Don’t give up,” Jeni says, holding up the arrow.

Clint takes it, nocks it, and draws. From this angle, with this terrible arrow, a moving target and the smoke swirling in the wind off the river, it’s an impossible shot.

He smiles and lets go.

The leading thug goes down, tumbling lifeless into the guy behind him who falls as well just as Callie barrels through the open door with a baseball bat. The next guy clustered around the door takes one to the head as Callie swings, the satisfying aluminium crack reverberating off the buildings lining the street as she hits a homerun to center field on the guy’s head.

The last of the four steps back, fumbles in his vest and brings up a .22, leveling it at arm’s length, six inches from Callie’s face.

 _No no no no no!_ There’s a frozen instant where Clint calculates his odds of survival if he were to jump from this height—if he could hit the guy below before he pulls the trigger—before he gives up on the math and leaps up on the wall, takes a deep breath and—

“ _Hoooooooooooooooh_!”

The cry booms off the buildings, thunderously loud, mixed with the ragged pulse of running feet. Everyone—friend and foe alike—turns to stare as the Riveters pound down the street toward them, emerging from the swirling smoke like an avenging wave of valkyries straight out of Valhalla, weapons aloft, screaming.

The Riveters are clutching bats and knives and machetes and Clint thinks he sees a halberd that someone must have liberated from a museum somewhere. They crash into Commander’s troops like surf hitting the shore.

“Fire! Fire!” Jayden yells and the kids on the roof open up with their slingshots. Between the rain of missiles from the roof and the fury of the Riveters, the Company falls, reaped like ripe grain.

Clint whirls to the stairwell, takes the stairs down three at a time to emerge at the side door just as Callie straightens up. He ducks her swing and flings himself out of range of the bat.

“Woah woah woah! Callie! It’s me!”

Callie blinks, fire in her eyes, and lowers the bat. She takes a deep breath, pushes back the mane of her dreads with one hand, then swipes the back of her fist across her cheek, smearing someone else’s blood into a streak across her face.

“Are you okay?” Clint asks, staying where he is just in case the bat comes up again.

“Yeah,” she pants. “You?”

He nods. “The kids?”

“We’re all okay,” Callie says. She sounds a little stunned.

Together they watch a Riveter kick the last of the Company still standing in the nuts. The man doubles over, bright red baseball cap tumbling off his head, meets her knee coming up on the way down and collapses to the street, unmoving. She glares down at him for a moment then stomps on the cap, grinding it into the street with her heel.

There’s about four seconds of perfect silence.

The kids on the roof erupt into cheers. The Riveters, looking around for more asses to kick and not finding any, straighten up out of fighting crouches, grinning at each other like lunatics before they join in. In a moment of improbable poetic justice, the moon suddenly breaks through the rainclouds overhead, filling the night sky with silver light.

“Oh my god, we won,” Callie whispers.

Clint grins. “I told you we cou—”

A bolt of red-hot light flares out of the darkness and a corner of Callie’s building explodes into rubble. There’s a shocked silence as everyone freezes, trying to process what just happened.

Clint doesn’t have to process shit. He recognizes the beam of a repulsor weapon when he sees one.

“Down!” he screams, “everybody down!” He dives for cover as another beam sizzles past him. The wall behind him disintegrates in a burst of shattered brick. The Riveters break and scramble for cover.

The pulse came from somewhere up high. He risks a look from behind his pile of rubble. On the roof of the building across the street, silhouetted against the bright moon, is a man in combat uniform. It can only be Commander. Clint can’t make out any details, the light behind him throwing his features into darkness. But there’s a glint of something metallic as he raises his arm. Clint flings himself behind his pile again.

Another big chunk of Callie’s building shatters in an explosion of light. Chips of concrete fall around them like chunky rain.

“What the hell _is_ that?” Callie chokes beside him, face spattered grey with masonry dust.

“Repulsor weapon,” Clint hisses back, heart sinking. He presses his back against the broken concrete barrier and tries to think. He doesn’t know much about the Iron Man armour, only some of the intel SHIELD had had on it, most of which was above his clearance level. But he’d gotten a look at what it could do during the invasion. Until the tide turned and they were overwhelmed. Stark had been one of the first to die.

But he knew enough to know nothing they’ve got will either take that kind of tech out or defend against it. If the weapon is fully charged Commander could use it to dismantle the entire orphanage bit by bit. The vault where the kids are hiding is in the basement. Could they dig them out in time with a building collapsed on top them? Would the vault hold against that? What about the kids on the roof?

He grits his teeth. It can’t come to that. _It can’t._

Callie grips his arm. “No,” she hisses. “ _No_ , Clint, you can’t go ou—”

“Stay here,” he snaps, shaking off her hand. He gets his feet under him and takes a deep breath, gripping the edge of the heap of concrete to steady himself. Maybe if he can get up to the roof without getting shot he can find another arrow, or… use one of the kids’ slingshots… no, that would draw Commander’s attention, he can’t do that… okay, then maybe he can… maybe he can…

Oh fuck it, he’s got to do _something._

Clint throws himself out into the street, rolls into a crouch and comes to his feet, the distinctive whine of the repulsor weapon powering up filling the air. He sprints across the broken pavement, skipping and weaving through piles of rubble, overturned cars, knowing there’s nothing stopping Commander from simply picking him off, long before he even gets close to a stairwell that’ll lead him up to the roof. He wonders if he’ll even feel the blast when it inevitably comes.

The whine intensifies, clawing its way up the scale to full capacity, the harmonic raising the hair at the back of his neck as he runs—

An ear-splitting burst of gunfire slices through the whine, the staccato percussion of a semi-automatic rifle. Clint flings himself around a corner, flattens himself against a wall and looks up, hoping…

It’s Shadow. It’s Shadow with a big gun. Now _that’s_ a birthday present.

Shadow and Commander occupy buildings across from one another over the broken expanse of Grand Street. The roof of the building Shadow’s perched on is slightly higher than the one Commander’s on. Shadow’s hard to see in the shadows thrown by moonlight, but the muzzle flash from the M4 is easy enough to spot. Clint watches as Commander pops up from where he’d dived for cover, unleashing the repulsor at Shadow’s position. Clint holds his breath as the blast shatters concrete, fractures steel, disintegrating a large swath of the roof.

Shadow appears again and there’s more fire from the gun. Clint can see the figure of Commander moving, and there seem to be other shapes up there too, more of Commander’s troops? _Oh shit—_

He grits his teeth in frustration, back flat against the wall behind him. He’s useless down here! Shadow may have a big gun but he hasn’t got a chance against a repulsor gauntlet. Eventually he’ll be overwhelmed. Clint pounds his fist against the concrete wall. He can’t see anyway to help him! If he had his SHIELD bow…but he doesn’t, he’s got Nat’s bow, Nat’s bow and no arrows, no arrows…

He scans the street frantically as Commander and Shadow trade another volley of fire, moving and dodging along the rooftops, black shapes against the bright moon. The street is littered with rubble and bodies and…

And one of the men he’d shot earlier. The crappy Saturday Night Special lying next the body is useless but the arrow through his neck isn’t. Clint waits for the repulsor to sound again, trusting in that fractional interval it takes the weapon to recharge to sprint over to the body, yank the arrow from its neck and roll into the shelter of a small alley. Bullets splat into the street behind him—small caliber fire—at least some of Commander’s remaining men must be armed. Armed and with orders to shoot him.

Commander’s building is only a couple of doors away from his position, he can see the blasted open lobby from here. Probably only 5 or 6 stories high as far as he can tell and likely undefended until he makes it up the stairs to the roof...

He takes a moment to ponder the wisdom of assaulting the enemy’s tower with…an arrow. Oh, and the knife in his boot. One spent, mangled arrow and something he used to open a can of Chef Boyardee with last week. He takes a deep breath and lets it out as a sigh. Then breaks from the alley, crouch-runs as silently as possible into the lobby of Commander’s building and starts up the stairs.

The sound of the fight reaches him even here inside the building. He creeps up the broken stairway as quietly as he can even though the explosions from the repulsor, the pounding of running boots and the deafening retorts from the rifle mask his movement. Which, it sounds like Shadow’s on the move, that the rifle’s getting closer.

He doesn’t see any of Commander’s people on the stairs. By this time he thinks Commander may be running a little short of guys. Almost certainly they’re all up on the roof with him.

Clint pauses at the landing at the top, trying to even out his breathing. He can see through the open door of the stairwell enclosure to the roof beyond, to indistinct shapes moving in the darkness. The repulsor discharges again, lighting up the space with a red-gold glow, and behind it—is Commander. The man is decked out with a full compliment of what a Hollywood casting department thinks a super soldier would wear, all in inappropriate desert camo, with lots of buckles and straps and stuff, and more pouches than six Deadpools. He’s also got on an IronMan gauntlet, holding it braced with his other hand, directed out into the darkness. Presumably at Shadow.

Clint nocks the arrow, quietly, so quietly. He quite literally only has one shot at this.

Commander moves abruptly, out of his line of sight. Another dark figure runs past the stairwell door. Clint ducks back into the shadows of the enclosure.

He suppresses a curse. This complicates things. He desperately scans the roof for something he can hide behind, anything that’ll conceal him long enough to get off a shot.

There’s a bank of air con units about 2 meters away. He breathes in the darkness waiting for another repulsor flare or for the stupid moon to reemerge from the scudding clouds overhead. He just needs enough light to let him get a glimpse, make sure his way is clear through Commander’s men.

 _Now._ Moonlight floods the roof, and Clint uses the staccato burst of Shadow’s rifle fire to mask the sound of his dash to the condenser units. He reaches them and crouches down, heartbeat thudding in his ears.

And waits, sweat making his palms slippery on the grip of the bow, trying to calm his breathing, until he hears the whine of the repulsor again. When Commander is most likely to be distracted.

Clint draws the bow at his side—slowly, so slowly—takes a deep breath and holds it as he pops up from his shelter, levels the bow and shoots.

The arrow flies true, on target to that small space between Commander’s collar and the bottom of his helmet. It’s _there_ , it’s—

Time slows down as Shadow’s rifle sounds again and Commander jerks to the side. Clint watches the arrow bounce off the lower edge of the helmet, the shaft splintering…no no _no!_

There’s a thump as something heavy hits the roof.

The moon disappears behind the clouds plunging the roof into darkness.

Something very hard and very heavy hits the back of his head. Clint gasps and goes to his knees, bright stars filling his vision, fighting to keep hold of the fraying strands of his consciousness. He looks up.

The moon reemerges, flooding the roof with silver light. Four meters away Shadow bounces up out of a crouch and punches Commander in the neck. The strike is beautiful, the arc of the blow precisely measured, perfectly calculated in force and trajectory, a killing blow.

Impossibly Commander gets up a block. More luck than plan, not enough to stop it, but maybe just enough to survive it. He staggers—

One of Commander’s soldiers unloads a full mag into Shadow’s back.

Clint loses the battle with his body to stay upright and topples over. The harsh ringing in his ears blots out all sound except for the full body thud of his heartbeat. He can feel the rough surface of the roof under his cheek, his field of his vision limited to the plane of the roof and the approach of Commander’s boots.

“Shoot this one too?” someone asks.

“A waste of ammunition,” someone else says. A deep voice, full of menace. “We have what we came for. Move out.”


	13. Rescue

“Stop! Stop! Dammit, Callie, get off me!” 

Clint swats at Callie’s hands. She’s holding a mostly clean rag in one and a bottle of her home-mixed first aid cure-all from hell in the other. Concocted out of whatever can still be salvaged out of Manhattan’s surviving Duane Reades, the little bottle seems to consist mostly of iodine and alcohol and sadness and something that makes the sting last for, like, an hour. It’s why Callie’s kids are all so healthy—knowing that the smallest scrape will send her to the medicine cabinet for this stuff makes them careful.

“Shut up,” she growls. “And _hold still_.”

“I told you I’m _fine_ , l don’t need—!”

Channeling what is obviously previous experience in childcare, Callie grabs his earlobe and gives it a vicious twist.

“Ow, _dammit!_ ”

Callie jams the solution-soaked cloth against the scratched up skin of his cheek. Apparently one of the secret ingredients in this particular mix is lava.

“Ahhhhh!”

DeRosa makes a sucking sound in her teeth. “So this is the hero of the Battle of Mott Street.”

“Hah!” Callie says.

“I thought _I_ was the hero of the Battle of Mott Street.” Costas crosses her arms over her chest.

DeRosa looks up and pats her bicep. “You did great, babe. We can’t all have gotten pistol whipped on the roof of a self storage unit in Chinatown.”

“You guys are all just so damn hilarious,” Clint says, gritting his teeth against the fury of the antiseptic.

Apparently satisfied with the amount of pain she’s inflicted on the front of him, Callie moves around to the back, pushing at his hair, fingers probing the sizeable lump left where the Commander’s goon had clocked him.

Callie hisses as he winces. “This is nasty, Cl—um, Carl. You’re hurt, maybe concussed. And that means bedrest, not chasing off after some figment of your imagination in the dark…”

Clint had woken up in a corner of the orphanage common room to a couple of toddlers filling in the spaces of his tattoo with pink highlighter. He doesn’t remember how he managed to get down off the roof. Or how long he’d spent unconscious up there. Or how long he’d been passed out on Callie’s floor after he came back. Dawn’s still a ways off, though, so it can’t have been that long. Callie’s had time to patch up both the kids and any of the Riveters who could stand it in the meantime.

He looks over at Susan, curled up asleep in a nest of blankets in front of Callie’s desk, a bandage on her arm.

“For the _last time_ ,” he grits out, “Shadow is not a figment of my imagination. You all saw him, he was up on the roof…who the hell do you think Commander was shooting at anyway?”

“I mean, I thought he was shooting at you,” Costas says. “You were the only one stupid enough to be up there with him.”

“He was shooting at Shadow!”

He was shooting at Shadow, Clint thinks, and he’d missed. But one of his goons _hadn’t._

Clint can still feel the impact of those rounds, like they’d struck _him_ in the back, instead of Shadow.

He’d yelled until the Riveters had send people up to check. They assured him there was no black-clad, armoured body up on the roof of the storage unit.

So he’s going with the belief that Shadow is still alive—that the armour had somehow kept him alive. And that Commander took him.

And dammit, _Clint’s gonna go get him back_.

Callie picks a length of bandage, obliviously with the intent of wrapping around his head where it will just get in the way, telegraph the fact that he’s injured, and interfere with his eyesight.

Clint closes his hand over her wrist, stilling her movement.

He looks up. “Callie, I’m going after him.”

She studies his face, a worried little frown line between her brows.

“Be careful,” she sighs, unhappy.

Costas shakes her head.

***

Clint leaps over another alleyway between buildings, retracing the path he and Shadow took to the Manhattan Detention Center… was it only two days ago? The wound on his thigh pulls tight as he lands, and the impact reverberates through his body, making the lump on the back of his head pound.

Ugh, seems longer.

The streets are just as dead as they were then at that time of night. Maybe more so—people have been moving out of the Company’s territory for months now as the gang expanded, a process that’s accelerated since the open warfare with the Riveters began. Now only the stupid and the desperate remain in Chinatown and most of Little Italy, picking at scraps others have left behind. 

He wonders what the point of it all this is. What Commander is trying to do. And what did they mean by ‘they got what they came for’? Somehow he can’t believe that the Company getting their asses kicked by a bunch of teenagers counts as ‘what they came for.’ What kind of commander doesn’t seem to care about wasting a good portion of his men in a battle they lost?

One that thinks he can still win the war, that’s who.

Clint ducks under the dubious shelter of a lopsided shack, an old pigeon coop or something, falling apart up on the roof, to catch his breath. He wipes the rain out of his eyes and adjusts his hood. Which used to be waterproof but now maybe not so much. He’s back in the old Ronin costume. Even the annoying pants. The weight of the sword on his back is familiar, comforting, the memory of the smooth grip of the bow already beginning to fade.

He’s back to his old Ronin strategy tonight too: jump through a window and fight whoever stands up. He can’t really call the half formed ideas he’s got about attacking Commander’s castle a plan. What plan could he possibly come up with to account for one person assaulting a prison full of ex marines on the outside hope of finding someone whose identity he doesn’t actually know? Those would all be stupid plans. Just as good not to have one at all.

Besides, Ronin not great at plans. Making plans used to be SHIELD’s job. It used to be Coulson’s job. And look how well that worked out for all of those guys, nothing but bones now under the wreckage of midtown.

He doesn’t need a plan. Ronin’s gonna go in there, find Shadow, and get him out. And he’s gonna go _through_ anyone who gets in his way.

Clint pushes away from the little shack, trying to ignore the pain in his head, the fatigue dragging at his limbs. He’s got to keep going. If they really do have Shadow who knows how long they’ll keep him alive. What they’re doing to him right now. He grits his teeth, cold rain dripping from the edge of the hood, sliding down his face, falling in silver-edged drops to the slick tile under his boots. He thinks about Shadow’s hands, how they’d been so strong and so gentle on his body in the safehouse at 240 Centre. About Shadow’s calm voice in his ear, his arms around him. Falling asleep with his breath on his neck.

He hates that they hurt him. They’re going to pay for that.

Later. Thinking later. Moving now.

He takes a couple of steps backward then runs at the next gap between buildings. Keep going, Clint, keep going.

Maybe fifteen minutes of, if he’s honest, pretty terrible sneaking later he crouches panting on the ledge of the north tower, just across the narrow alleyway from the Manhattan Detention Centre, above what used to be the Bridge of Sighs. The complex is an indistinct lumpy mountain in the rain, jagged at the roofline from the wreckage left behind when he and Shadow had blown up the Howitzer.

He’s beginning to wonder if all this sneaking around is even necessary. There’s been no sign of any patrols. No silhouettes on the walkways crisscrossing what’s left of the roof. And the complex is dark, mostly, though there’s some ruddy light coming from somewhere inside. Fires probably, or crude torches. The place looks deserted.

His heart sinks. What if Shadow’s not here? Is there another base somewhere? This is the only lead he’s got on Commander’s operations. How’s he going to find him if—

He shakes his head, raindrops flying. One thing at a time. Too much thinking again. Move. _Move_.

Clint shakes out a length of tactical rope, very specifically not thinking about _that,_ and fastens a grapple to the clip at the end of it. He eyes a low wall on the building opposite, one of the few left intact on this level, and the jagged, broken window that opens into the floor beneath. He hefts the grapple, winds up his swing and lets go. The throw is accurate, of course it is, and the grapple lands with a tinny thunk. He tugs on the line to hook it, takes a breath—again, not thinking, cause this is gonna hurt—and jumps.

He hits the floor behind the window hard, flails through a couple of rotations to shed his momentum, the back scabbard gouging divots into his back, and rolls into a crouch against a wall. Then freezes, alert for any sound. Nothing. Nothing but dust and darkness and the patter of the rain outside.

He thinks for a moment about trying to retrieve the rope before deciding against it. What, is he going to swing across the street with Shadow in his arms like Tarzan? Whatever happens he’s going to have to find another way out of here.

Clint flattens himself against the wall and slips through the open doorframe into a long, broken hallway. Without any intel to narrow down the search he’s left with gut instinct and chance as guides. He shrugs mentally and sets off in the direction he saw the greatest concentration of firelight coming from.Trusting to the faint beam of a penlight he fumbles out of a pouch to keep from falling through holes in the floor.

This close to where the explosion was the structure of the building is creaky and unstable. He works his way deeper into the complex, one floor after another, still seeing no one, hearing no other sounds, not even the rain this far inside. As he goes deeper, and lower, the frequency of the fires increases. They’re weak things, clearly deliberately set, sometimes even inside stuff like old file cabinets and rubbish bins, quickly burning through their fuel—old documents, he guesses, paper and foul-smelling plastic. 

Clint edges around a corner, hugging the wall down the length of a long corridor, towards a concentration of flickering red light throwing shadows on the wall outside a big open room at the end.

The door is half open. He risks a peek inside but it looks empty.

Empty except for a single massive chair, which has, from what he can make out through flickering gloom, someone hunched over in it.

Clint catches his breath, pushes open the door and slips inside, closing it behind him. The room is big, cavelike, with banks of bizarre looking equipment lining the walls. Some of which is obviously missing, leaving behind gaping, shadowed holes in the wall and floor. The rest of it is slowly being consumed by a dying fire, the scarlet glow of embers winking among ashes banked in drifts over the floor. The air stinks of burned wiring and charred metal, though thankfully a big hole in one wall has vented most of the smoke. Ash drifts in the faint current of air from outside the room, black against the orange flicker of the fire. Clint’s thankful for the balaclava, the mask, that covers his nose and mouth, protecting it from the foul haze in the room.

The figure in the chair is unmoving, slumped, heading hanging. Clint can’t see his face, but he can tell he’s not wearing Shadow’s mask.

The man _is_ wearing the same neoprene undersuit Shadow wore in the safe house though, bright blue piping tracing the curve of his arms, winding over his chest, his legs.

Fire crackles and pops along the edges of the room, the building otherwise completely silent. The figure in the massive chair is utterly still.

Clint has to will his feet to move, to get closer. He doesn’t want to see what Shadow’s corpse looks like. The thought makes his gut cramp. It’s not fair if Shadow’s dead. Not before he had the chance to…

_To what, idiot? Go steady? Moron._

He moves into the room, stops in front of the bulky techno chair, which looks like someone took a hammer to it, smouldering in places, although still securely holding its captive at both ankles and wrists.

Clint reaches out, fingers probing for a pulse in the man’s neck.

The skin is cool but not corpse cold. Pulse thready. Faint, but there.

He breaths out, only now aware he’d been holding his breath, and tips the man’s chin up to study his face in the dwindling firelight.

Dark hair, black in this light, falls about the man’s face; parted in the middle and long, brushing his collar. Regular features, strong jaw. A week or so of scuff dark against pale, wax-hued skin. Younger than he would have thought. He doesn’t recognize him…except maybe there was something a little familiar about the…eh, impossible to say. Could even have been in some file somewhere that…

Anyway…somehow it’s not who he’d been picturing.

I mean, who _was_ he imagining behind Shadow’s mask? When he’d had time to think about at all he’d given up the exercise as pointless. It could be anyone he ever knew at SHIELD, and there’d been a lot of people moving through the place over the years.

Of course, in the occasional embarrassing wet dream, Shadow tended to look mostly like his ancient unrequited crush, Phil Coulson. But that doesn’t mean anything, there’s nothing new about Coulson’s appearance in dreams like _that_.

The guy twitches under his fingers, as if recoiling from Clint’s light grip on his chin. Clint lets him go and wonders what he should do next. I mean, in movies you’d throw a bucket of water on the guy to wake him up. Clint looks around. No buckets. No water either…

The man moans, struggling to get his head up. He blinks open his eyes—light colored, maybe blue— and looks up at Clint blearily. He’s got a cut over one eye, dried blood flaking from his skin, the beginnings of a shiner over the other. A classic variation on the ‘a bunch of goons kidnapped me, beat me up and tied me to a chair’ ensemble that Clint is way too familiar with at this point in his career.

Clint unlatches his mask, peels off the balaclava and ducks his head to peer up into the man’s face.

“Shadow?”

The guy mumbles something Clint can’t make out, coughs and clears his throat before trying again. 

“What… did you call me?”

“Um, Shadow? It’s me, Clint.”

The guy thumps his head back against the chunky metal headrest and closes his eyes.

“I know who you are, Barton. And my name ain’t Shadow, pal.”

Clint bites his lip, shifts his weight to the other foot, sort of wallowing in Shadow’s actual voice unfiltered through the throat mic. “I mean, I know it’s not really. You won’t tell me your name. But…”

Something behind them explodes. Clint throws himself on top of Shadow, shielding him, the sword out before the reverb dies away.

He glares back over his shoulder to find no one there—the explosion apparently just the random failure of some component in the ruined bank of machinery along the wall.

Clint peels himself off Shadow and overhands the sword back into the scabbard, feeling stupid.

The narrow look the guy is giving him isn’t helping any.

_Get a grip, Clint._

“Um, so we should probably go, this place feels a little unstable. Any ideas for getting these restraints off your—”

The guy flexes one arm—uh, wait, that arm, what he can see of it sticking out of Shadow’s undersuit—is super weird. The ruddy firelight reflects off it as if it’s made of something shiny, like aluminium. Or polished steel. What the h—!

The heavy metal shackle pinning Shadow’s wrist bursts off, like popping open a can of soda.

Clint’s jaw drops as he watches the guy use the shiny arm to smash open the other wrist restraint before bending to work on his ankles.

“If you could do that then what the hell are you still doing here?” Clint demands. He tries not to sound indignant about it but this is not exactly the rescue mission he was maybe picturing.

“Power’s out now,” the guy grunts, prying apart the last shackle.

He gets to his feet, barely, wobbling. Clint reaches out a hand to help steady him but the guy shrugs it off. Clint’s fist bounces off the shiny forearm. It’s hard. And cold.

“Is this…you have a _metal hand_?”

“Technically,” the guy says, looking around, getting his bearings, “it’s the whole arm.”

Clint stares, raises a hand to poke at it. “Does it come off?”

The guys shrugs his arm away and shoots Clint a look like maybe he’s insane. “No, it does not come off. Do you _mind_? Are you gonna help me get out of here or…"

The guy’s voice fades out of Clint's consciousness, washed away by white noise. _His_ Shadow does not have a metal arm. Clint knows intimately exactly what Shadow’s arms feel like. What his hands feel like. And this isn't...

Clint slaps his palm against his forehead, pulls the hand down hard over his face to his jaw. _Oh god, he’s been so stupid._

There are _two_ Shadows.

Something else explodes, startling them both. A gout of fire bursts from one of the big metal cabinets on the far wall, a wave of heat rolling over them.

“Time to go!” The guy starts for the door.

Clint stumbles to catch up, trying to get his brain back in gear. “Okay. Alright. So… what do I call you?”

“Why do you have to call me anything, let’s just get out of here.” The guy limps out into the corridor, takes off at an unsteady pace.

“I have to call you something. What if we get separated or—”

“If I give you a name will you shut up? You can call me Asset.”

“Asset? That sounds dumb, you mean like…wait, does that have something to do with your ass? Because that’s just…”

“Geez, they really weren’t wrong about you, Barton. And how is it dumb? Like ‘Shadow’ isn’t?”

Clint feels somehow offended. Like this rando should not be talking shit about Shadow. Then he realizes how stupid that is and sighs.

They turn another corner, heading further into the interior of the building. Clint pushes open a door to a stairwell as explosions sound from the big cavelike room, louder this time. Stronger.

“I gotta say, this is kind of an anti climax,” he says, holding open the door.

He lets the guy—um, Asset… seriously, stupid name—go ahead of him, clutching the railing, his steps still unsteady. He stumbles again and Clint grips his arm to keep him from sliding down the stairs. Asset overcompensates and tumbles backward into him.

Clint grunts, taking part of the guy’s weight. “What the heck, why are you so heavy?!”

“I think I mentioned the metal arm,” Asset growls, righting himself.

More explosions rumble through the building shaking the walls around them.

“We need to move, Barton! Come on!”

Asset picks up his pace, careening recklessly down the stairs as plaster dust shaken loose from the ceiling rains down around them.

By the time they make it down another eight floors they’re both gasping for breath, and the explosions have become an almost continuous wave of noise and heat, rocking the building around them. They hit the lobby at a run and burst through the wide doors out into the street just in time to see one whole side blow out in a deafening eruption of flame.

Clint grabs the guy and they stagger-run down the street out of reach of debris and the expanding dust cloud, rounding the corner into 9th, and the shelter of an enormous pile of rubble that used to be some municipal building or other.

They both double over, clasping their knees, gulping lungfuls of clean night air as explosions light up the brightening night sky overhead.

“Dammit, that was close,” Asset says, straightening. "What took you so long?"

Clint coughs, still bent over his knees, trying to get plaster dust out of his lungs. “Hey,” he wheezes, “I came as fast as I could, you don’t have to—”

“Not you, idiot,” Asset says.

Clint looks up. Shadow is standing in the street in front of them. The long black coat falls around him, creating a sort of matte black cocoon. The thin electric-blue light tracing the contour of the armour the only thing indicating the form within. 

“Sorry,” Shadow says. “I got here as fast as I could, there’s been a... slight... setback—”

“You’re telling me," Asset says, "this sure as shit didn’t turn out the way it was supposed to...”

“Shadow!”

Shadow cocks his head at Clint but says nothing.

Asset gives him a look, then limps painfully into the street. Shadow hooks an arm around his shoulders, the exoskeleton of the suit taking Asset’s weight effortlessly. Shadow turns and together they walk slowly away.

“Wait! Are you… where the hell are you going?” Clint demands.

“Go home, Clint,” Shadow says over his shoulder.

“What? No! What is—!”

And then they just…disappear. One moment they’re both standing there together and the next they’ve entirely vanished. Nothing remains but Clint, the fading sound of the fire still burning behind him, and the wind in the street. 

_What the—!!_

Clint runs into the street, searching—then stops. Wait. Hadn’t there had been something different about Shadow’s voice? Even filtered through the mic it wasn’t his normal… and… Shadow been a good head shorter than Asset… did he imagine that? Shadow’s helmet only coming up to Asset’s shoulder? That can’t be right, Shadow is a little taller than Clint, in the boots anyway, and Asset is just about his…

_What the _hell_ is going on?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> …surprise? You guys make me work so damn hard to stay even one step ahead of you :D


	14. The Favour

It’s been eight days since whatever the hell happened at Commander’s Castle happened.

Clint rolls into his cot up in Callie’s attic and snuggles in, elbows bent behind his head, making a cradle for his head in his hands. It’s definitely breezier up here than it used to be. The late afternoon air, fragrant with the smell of cook-fires, with the wet planty undercurrent of the marshlands along the river, passes through his room with a lot less resistance than it had the first month he was here. Probably because of all the new holes in the building.

It’s still a couple of hours until dinner, which will be in the common room tonight. Barbecues up on the roof are out for the duration; the structural damage is so bad up there Callie had actually wanted Clint to move to another room on the outside chance the ceiling collapses.

The air is noticeably colder as the sun dips behind the broken bones of Manhattan’s skyscrapers, the city sliding into fall, tumbling toward the new year, whatever that means anymore. People have already started to double down on their search for a safe place to hole up to escape the heavy wet snows of winter, hoping what they’ve salvaged from the ruins will be enough to keep them alive until spring.

The countdown is on for Callie and the kids. The old Merchant’s Association took a lot of damage from Commander’s repulsors, and, actually, more from the bits of it they intentionally collapsed on the heads of the Company. It’s not the kinda thing that’s gonna get fixed by hanging up a couple of tarps. We—um, they… _whatever_ —are going to have to move.

Clint thinks the Riveters have the right idea, living in one of those old banks that Manhattan is thick with, even now. Big things, monuments even, built to last in the previous century. He’d feel better with the orphanage resettled behind a heavy iron door—someplace put together from big blocks of cut stone, with bars on the windows. Sure, those old banks are big and cold and echoey, but it’d be safe. There’s even one up the street at Canal and Bowery if they wanted to stay more or less in Chinatown.

 _If_ they wanted to stay… that’s the decision that’s putting the wrinkles in Callie’s forehead lately. It’s something everyone left in the city has asked themselves at some point—why stay? Each day that passes more of the city falls down, and less useful salvage remains, the people remaining growing ever more desperate, more savage. But what’s the alternative? North is even colder, and just more ruined cities. West into Pennsylvania? What are they gonna do, grow crops? How long does it even take to grow enough plants to make a hot dog bun?

And even if there are people already living out there to help, are they gonna be happy to see fifty more hungry people show up on their doorstep with winter coming on?

Clint doubts Callie will go that far. It’d be reckless to give up what she’s got going now; Shadow’s deal—a sure thing.

Except… how sure is it, really? Someone out there is providing enough supplies to ensureorphanage survives in exchange for giving Clint shelter to heal up. How long is that gonna last?

Clint shifts one of his hands to his side. His fingers track down the sharp outlines of his ribs under his ragged t-shirt, to brush the light bandage over the bullet wound in his side. Underneath it, the wound is well on its way to becoming just another knot of scar tissue, indistinguishable from all the other catastrophes inflicted on his body, a fading memory.

The gash on his thigh that Shadow stitched up, the lump on the back of his head when they took him—all healing. Clint is currently just about as healthy as he’s likely to get in Mad Max New York.

Will the supplies, the food, keep coming as long as he stays? Or will it suddenly just stop one day in January when it gets tough for everyone? Even whoever the hell Shadow is.

Clint drops his hand, rolls to his side to stare at the wall. And— _ugh, does he really need to think about this now?_ —even _if_ Shadow, or Shadow’s people, or who the hell ever, is willing to pay for his room and board forever, what does _he_ want to do? Say he decides not to stay, decides to move on. To what?

He remembers his first winter after the Battle of Manhattan. In one way, at least, it’d been easier then. His head had been so scrambled there was no question of making choices, of thinking. Pretty much the only thing he had going for him at that point was just a dumb animal’s stubborn will to survive.

Not being plagued by decision making had been nice, he supposes. Everything else had totally sucked, though. 

He’d been so messed up then, gutted by guilt and grief, hopelessness and anger, he’d hardly known what he was doing. Loki’d been in his head like whoa, 24/7. It’d taken months before he could close his eyes without hearing his voice, his laugh, feeling again Loki’s fingers on all Clint’s buttons, winding him up, making him go.

He’s still not sure how he got through that winter, actually. He remembers hiding. Hiding from Nat and what was left of SHIELD; what was left of the Avengers. But mostly from himself.

It had taken him a while to even realize that spring had come after that; that he’d somehow managed to survive. Emerging from his squalid little hole that first spring had been like a miracle. A miracle he didn’t want.

He rolls over onto his back again, looks up at the high, cold clouds in the darkening skythough the holes in his ceiling. I mean, this is better, right? He’s worn a Clint-shaped depression into the cot, his trusty Spiderman blanket tucked warm around his feet. The kids seem to kinda like him. I mean, sure, he’s taking up more of Callie’s resources than he wants to, but without him, without Shadow’s deal, would they have anything at all? And he’s helping, sort of, right? Defending the orphanage?

…or would they even have been a target without him here?

_Ugh. Dammit, brain, can you just _stop_??_

Clint grabs the blanket and pulls it up to his chin, tries to think about something else. He’s way, _way_ , too sober to be asking himself what he wants to do with his life; who he wants to be when he grows up.

Whether he’s worth saving.

It’s an old question. It’s not likely he’ll suddenly find an answer to it tonight.

_…okay, alright, different topic…_

The Shadow thing. Right. Now _there’s_ something that could stand more thinking about.

So apparently there are a bunch of shadows wandering around Manhattan in masks and long black coats making sure Clint doesn’t die. Huh. Some of them are short. Some of them have metal arms and Brooklyn accents. Some of them save him from bleeding out on rooftops. Some of them feed him peaches, and blow up Howitzers, and have swanky condos at 240 Centre. Just how many of these people are there? And what the hell are they even doing anyway?

I mean, it’s weird. Having—at least a three-pack…more?—of guardian angels is pretty weird, no doubt, no doubt. Is it the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to him? No, it is not. Not by a long shot. 

He takes in a big lungful of air and sighs it out. Tucks his hands behind his head again.

And…okay, this is kinda crazy, but the Keep Clint Alive Guardian Angel Shadow Club is not really the thing he wants… _needs?_ … to figure out first anyway.

What he really wants to know is…who is _his_ Shadow?

He squirms under the blanket. He doesn’t like to think that Peach Shadow and Howitzer Shadow had been different guys. Somehow that’s important. They’re not, though, he’s pretty sure, though he maybe can’t explain why he thinks that. Something about his voice, probably, or the cadence of his speech. Something about the way his Shadow had touched him, how he’d…

Clint frees one of his hands, snakes it under the blanket, under the waistband of his jeans. He skims his fingers along the seam left from the wound in his thigh and thinks about Shadow’s hands being there instead: strong, demanding, inescapable. But somehow still careful. Lingering. He thinks about the sound Shadow had made—something involuntary, something pulled up out of him—as Clint writhed against the rope. That was… I mean, that was—

He slips his hand out of his pants and pins it behind his head. _Maybe you should think about something else, idiot._

_Right._

So who, yeah. Finding out who Shadow is would be great.

But he’ll settle for _where_.

Eight days. Eight days without a glimpse, without a sign. Not that he’d been looking. Definitely not.

So what if Clint likes to take long walks around the city at night? It’s good exercise. All that fresh air. Definitely good for cardiovascular…something something. So what if he looks around a little while he’s out getting exercise or whatever? It’s not like he’s _specifically_ looking for Shadow. That would be pathetic. He’s just, you know, looking. It’s totally not a big thing.

Clint’s traitor brain throws up a thought. Maybe Shadow has only been around because…like, if he were only here to protect Clint, and now with Commander gone and his castle destroyed, and winter coming on, there’s no longer any threat… it’s not like Clint needs protection anymore, right? So will Shadow… just disappear back into the city? Without the mask Clint could pass him on the street and he wouldn’t even know him.

It just seems really wrong that Clint just… never sees him again. Something hot and tight clenches in his gut when he thinks that. He gasps, a painful little indrawn breath.

No. That can’t be it. He’s not gonna let that be it. Alright, so there’s your answer right there, Clint. You’re all, ‘now what’ after Callie and the kids and the orphanage? Well, maybe what’s now is figuring out whatever the hell is going on with the Shadow Club.

Right after he finds _his_ Shadow.

Boom. There’s the plan, no problemo.

 _Nice_ , Good Shoulder Angel Clint says. Clint shuts up Traitor Brain Clint before it has a chance to point out just how impossible it’s going to be to find a man in post apocalyptic New York when he doesn’t even know what he looks like. _Details, details_.

He sighs and rolls over to his other side, tucking his hands under his chin. And honestly? It’s as good a plan as he ever has anyway.

Callie’s voice intrudes up the stairwell from downstairs. “Mangy Carl!”

Clint rolls his eyes. Callie has apparently decided she likes the new name better than his actual name. Or maybe she thinks she’d doing him a favour, protecting his identity like she said she would. Seems clear that the Riveters have pretty much figured out Clint is Ronin, though, so there’s not much point. As long as they never find out Ronin used to be Hawkeye, Loki’s willing little henchman—the guy that murdered Manhattan—he guesses it’s fine.

“Carl?!” Callie sounds impatient. Oh yeah, it’s bath day. She’s probably pretty busy. “Carl! You have a visitor!”

“What?” What the hell does she mean ‘a visitor?’ Who the hell would be visiting him? “Tell the kids I’ll be down later, I don’t want—”

A head of startlingly red hair appears above the level of the floor, ascending the staircase. 

Clint jackknives into a sitting position, the cot squeaking alarmingly. _What the hell is Natasha doing here?_ He resists the urge to clutch the blanket.

“Hello,” she says, stepping onto the landing. Her smile is small and gentle. He relaxes a little even though he definitely knows better.

“Hi, Nat,” he says slowly. “This is a… surprise.”

She walks in, pacing around his room like she owns it, peering into corners.

“Nice place,” she says finally, not finding anything interesting. I mean, Clint doesn’t actually own anything but his weapons and his gear and they’re all locked up in the trunk in his clubhouse.

“Thanks,” he says. He gestures vaguely at the wooden crate next to the bed. “Have a seat.”

She looks at the crate. “You don’t have a seat,” she says.

She squints up at his ceiling. “You also mostly don’t have a roof.”

“Well, it’s not the Carlton, but it’s okay.”

She stops in front of his cot, folding her arms over her chest. “Is this a good time to mention that if you’d come home with me you could have a room with a roof, and maybe even a bed that didn’t come out of the garbage pile behind an army surplus store?”

He looks up at her and smiles. “That’s a million and three, I think.”

She tilts her head, the fake reassuring smile edging into something a little more sincere. “Doesn’t mean I don’t mean it, though.”

“I know.”

She steps up to the cot and flops her butt down almost on top of him, forcing him to scoot over. The cot squeals in protest.

He shoves at her. “Do you mind?! You’re gonna break my bed!”

She shoves back, gets in a dig with her sharp little elbows.

“Ow! Stop it!” He swats at her arm.

She punches him in the kidneys. Not hard. I mean, hard enough, but there’s probably no internal bleeding.

He gives up and leans back against the rough paint of Callie’s wall, resigned.

She settles in beside him, small and warm. Together they listen as the kids in the room below squeal and laugh; the drumming of tiny feet on old wooden floors as they chase one another through the common room, Callie’s voice laid over it all, fond and patient.

He lets himself breathe out the first untroubled breath he’s taken in weeks.

She reaches up, rummages around in one of the pockets on her vest and produces a packet of cookies. Rips it open ungracefully with her teeth.

She holds out an Oreo.

He hesitates. “What’s this for?”

“Why does it have to be for something?” Her eyes are wide and innocent.

He frowns. “Because it is?”

She shrugs. “If you don’t want it—”

He plucks it out of her hand and stuffs it in his mouth. It’s delicious. He chews suspiciously.

She takes one for herself, nibbles at it. Downstairs the kids are playing Riveters verses Rednecks. The Riveters are winning. They always do.

“Another cookie?” she asks. She holds out the packet.

This time he doesn’t bother protesting. Whatever she’s here for he might as well get cookies out of it. He takes it. “Seriously, Nat, why are you feeding me cookies?”

She pops the rest of her cookie in her mouth and brushes her hands together, dislodging the crumbs from her fingers. Settles back more comfortably against the wall. “Because you’re going to miss dinner,” she says.

“I am?” he asks around a mouthful of cookie.

“I just thought, since I’m here, that you wouldn’t mind doing me a favour. A little one.”

“…a favour. Why should I do you a favour?” He doesn’t mean it. And he knows that she knows that as well. He owes her a million favours. More than he could repay in a thousand lifetimes.

“I dunno,” Clint says, fishing another cookie out of the packet, “I’m pretty busy.”

“I can see that. It’ll do you good to get out. Callie says you’ve been moping.”

“Oh, you’ve met Callie, have you?”

“We talked. She’s nice.”

“And she told you I’m moping?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, I’m not.”

She slants her eyes in his direction.

“I’m not!”

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”

Clint resists the urge to laugh. I mean, lately, what’s right?

On the other hand…

Maybe he should… could he ask her about Shadow? Could she help him find him?

Clint’s not an idiot. He’s aware that Nat’s leading up some kind of operation out in the city. Possibly with whatever’s left of the Avengers. But he doesn’t know the details and he doesn’t want to know. The less he understands about whatever it is she’s doing, the less of a threat he’ll be the next time someone steals his mind and rips it apart for secrets. Loki’s still out there. Somewhere.

He shakes his head. He can’t involve her. It’s not worth the risk.

“No, I’m not.”

“Why not?”

“Because.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Yes it is! I’m not moping, there’s nothing wrong with me, I don’t want to talk, you’re such a brat! Why can’t you—!”

Natasha inclines her head in the direction of the stairwell. Clint looks up to see two tiny sets of hands gripping the landing, two tiny, adorable heads above them. He recognizes Lilly and Matias.

“Inside voice,” Lilly says.

“Kids!” Callie calls from downstairs, “get back here, leave Carl and Barbara alone!”

The heads disappear.

Clint drops his head into his hands, scrubs at his hair, willing himself to calm down.

“…Barbara?” he asks eventually.

“I’ve always liked the name Barbara,” Natasha says. She puts her hand on his shoulder, squeezes it gently. “Clint, you’re not a threat.”

“You keep telling me that.”

“And I will until you believe it. You’ve been out here long enough. One way or another, it’s time I brought you in.”

Clint presses the heels of his hands into his closed eyes, making the darkness behind his lids go all spangled and bright.

“I know you’ll try.” He drops his hands and leans back again, feeling tired. “What’s the favour?”

He can see her in his peripheral vision, studying his face, micro movements of her eyes tracking all the tiny little changes, all his tells. He keeps his eyes on the wall across the room.

She sighs.

“I’d like you to deliver something for me. Very simple.” There’s a rustle of fabric as she pulls something out of the vest.

“Take this,” she says, handing over a small, compact piece of electronics. Clint turns it over in his palm. It’s weirdly heavy.

“What is it?”

“It’ll take care of the surveillance systems.”

In Clint’s experience, when Nat says that something will be ‘taken care of’ it usually doesn’t bode well for whatever it is she’s talking about.

“Simple delivery, huh?”

“And this,” she passes over a slim case, something that looks like a common name-card case. He opens it. Inside is an almost transparent piece of acetate with a pattern at the bottom. He lifts it out, looks though it at the light coming up from the stairwell.

“This looks like a thumbprint.”

She shrugs. “It just unlocks the doors.”

“Uh huh.”

She unclips something from her belt. Something small in a little canvas pouch. “And this is what you’re delivering. Oh, and take this,” she hands over a fancy high-tech torch, small but powerful, “in case it’s dark.”

Clint looks down at the little pile of items in his lap.

“Nat, this looks less like a delivery and more like I’m infiltrating the Pentagon. What’s the address?”

“240 Centre,” she says.


	15. Handled

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a gentle reminder that _Shadow_ isn’t a retcon, and that the story takes place a year before _After New York, Darkness_ , when evil overlord Coulson is still very much Evil Overlord Coulson. Also, Happy New Year, everyone, glad to be back, I hope everyone is safe and well and 2021 turns out to be far less interesting than 2020, although we probably shouldn't be holding our breath on that :D;;;;;

Clint stands outside what used to be Onieals, across from Centre Market, tucked away in the shadows of what was probably once, he thinks, a massage parlour or something; the concrete under his feet crunchy with bright shards of shattered neon. The sun’s just going down, framed in the long canyon of the ruined buildings along Grand Street, marching off to the west, gilding the crumbling stone around him in red and orange.

It makes him think of Stark, the last time he saw him, a streak of gold and crimson against the startlingly blue sky over Midtown, right before the world ended.

There’s been more and more of this stuff since Callie’s attic, he thinks. Memories, that is; popping up unlooked for like mushrooms after a rain. And the colours have been clearer than they’ve been since the Fall of Manhattan, the emotions attached to them sharper, not as much stuffed and blunted with the blue of Loki’s staff.

He’s not sure if that’s a good sign or a bad one. Sign of what, anyway?

He watches the sun sink further, oranges sliding into umbers, reds into burgundy. He remembers that time in the city—years ago—a bunch of them had trooped out to catch ‘Manhattanhenge’ one summer; standing out on the street, looking off towards Jersey over the water, waiting for the sun to go down, perfectly framed by the skyscrapers along 42nd. They’d all just happened to be stateside in the Manhattan SHIELD offices at the same time, something almost as uncommon as the solstice: him and Nat, and Sitwell and Hill and May. And Coulson. They’d waited for the sun to go down with the tourists and the instagrammers, and probably even a few actual New Yorkers, who you could tell were locals by the uneasy way they hung around the sidewalks, flagrantly violating the cardinal law of The City’s pedestrian highways by standing still.

They’d all stood side by side and watched as the sun disappeared below the horizon. And then they’d gone drinking at China Burger and gotten totally shit-faced on bourbon and Singapore Slings—or, at least, he mostly had, and definitely Sitwell too, who by the end of the evening was pretty much face down and snoring in what was left of a Pupu Platter. After which they’d staggered out into the street to wave down a succession of yellow cabs for home. That night Clint might possibly have been playing up the drunk thing—just a little—leaning on Coulson’s shoulder, waiting for a cab back to Bed-Stuy.

He can suddenly remember what it’d felt like; Coulson’s steadying hand on the small of Clint’s back, the warmth of it through his t-shirt, the cadence of his voice, quiet and close. He remembers the way Coulson’s face had looked from that intimate perspective, the angle of his jaw, profile backlit by the rushing, racing neon of the buildings around them. How they’d stood together against the backdrop of the blurred faces of people passing by, the blue-white surge of headlights as the cars filling the streets all lurched forward together as the traffic lights turned.

He remembers the endless dome of dark sky above and beyond all of it, how it’d felt like an enormous hand pressing down on the city, compressing all of it, all of them—the people, the light, Coulson beside him, and Clint, into something unique, and interconnected, and whole.

Coulson’s endless efficiency had coaxed a cab over far faster than Clint had wanted. He’d adeptly bundled Clint into the cab with a steadying hand on the back of his neck, a weirdly intimate version of that manoeuvre cops used to use to prevent perps from bashing their heads in on squad cars. Clint remembers wishing he hadn’t let go so soon.

He’d twisted around to look back as the cab drove off down 42nd; to the bar and Coulson standing out on the sidewalk in that solid way he had, alone, all in black, the tie on even at 4 in the morning, the city tall and busy and sparkly behind him. How pedestrians had parted and swirled around him as he stood unmoving, watching Clint’s cab drive away.

Clint raises a hand and rubs at his chest, at the feeling that’s appeared there along with the memory. That place on his chest—where Loki’s spear had touched him, and the big, hollow space behind it where his heart used to be—feels a little less empty, a little less cold. He’s not sure he likes what’s bled into the space, though. Something that feels both bitter and sweet, like salt tears and honey.

The sun slips below the ruins at the end of the street, the sky above darkening; on its way from indigo to black.

He drops his hand and focuses on the street. Now that he’s looking for it, he can see the optic on the outside of Onieals, just over the entrance to the basement, angled to capture a view of the obvious approaches.

Clint slips Nat’s electronic thingy out of the pocket of his jeans and thumbs on the button. There’s maybe some shimmer or something in the air, barely outside the range of his perception, but other than that nothing happens. He shrugs and shoves the thing back in his pocket, crossing the street.

The door at the bottom of the stairs leading to the basement swings open at his touch, the lock apparently released by whatever Nat’s device just did. He shuts the door carefully behind him and switches on the torch hoping that someone somewhere isn’t watching all this, waiting for him to get close enough to shoot.

The plyboard that covered the tunnel entrance is still propped against the wall where they’d left it. Clint steps into the tunnel, retracing the path he and Shadow had taken the night they blew up Commander’s Howitzer. He fishes out the case with the little acetate thumbprint for the lock at the end of it and emerges into the corridor beyond, harsh and buzzing with fluorescent light.

He shuts the door behind him, leans against it as his eyes adjust, and switches off the torch. So all the lights are on. So… Shadow’s home? _Which_ Shadow?

He shoves his hand in his pocket, running his thumb over the edge of the little case holding the thumbprint. Unless someone else has got one of these, who else could it be but _his_ Shadow?

Natasha had refused to elaborate about who, if anyone, would be waiting at the end of this caper for the little canvas bag full of whatever-the-hell it is that’s clipped to his belt. Clint hadn’t bothered to press for more, because Nat wasn’t gonna tell him, and also that she wouldn’t send him unarmed into a trap. Or anything dangerous. Well… too dangerous.

He thinks about that for a minute.

Usually.

Not unarmed, anyway. Mostly. There’s the knife slotted into the sole of his Vans, of course, and another one in his back pocket. And one on his belt. And the garrotte. In Budapest terms, that’s pretty much the definition of ‘unarmed,’ so…

He pushes off the door, slinks cautiously along the wall through the twists and turns of the long corridor, finally washing up in front of Shadow’s bland, unremarkable, apartment door, feeling his heartbeat pick up.

Should he knock? That seems weird. Call out ‘speedy delivery?’ or maybe ‘land shark?’

He shifts his weight from foot to foot, pushes his palms down the thighs of his jeans against the damp, aware that he’s stalling.

Is he really ready to see Shadow again? What’s he going to say to him anyway? All of the stuff he maybe kinda rehearsed in his head during eight days of pointless walks around Chinatown seems stupid now.

The fluorescent lights hum overhead, annoyingly.

_Fuck it._

Clint flips open the card case and presses the acetate thumbprint against the lock. The door releases with an undramatic click. He takes a breath and pushes it open. Just a little.

The lights inside are on.

He takes a breath, wraps his hand around the knife in his pocket, and steps inside.

The little hall with Shadow’s fancy shoe bench looks exactly the same. The room beyond seems empty, but somewhere beyond that he can just make out the sound of voices.

Voices. Plural.

 _Shit_. He hadn’t thought about Shadow having company. This complicates things.

Clint toes off his shoes and slips into the living room, flattening himself against a wall to listen. He can’t make out what the voices are saying—the old, stupid, problem with his hearing—but he gets the pitch and cadence: two men and a woman, probably, talking intently about something serious.

He fingers the knife in his pocket, nibbling at his bottom lip. I mean, he can’t just walk in now, can he? It’s kinda breaking and entering at this point. And spying. Although technically it’s not ‘breaking’ if he has a key to the door, right? Technically, that’s just entering. And if he can’t hear what they’re saying, it’s not exactly spying, either. Rude, maybe. I mean, he doesn’t want to piss Shadow off before they have a chance to talk…

He thinks that maybe by this point Shadow wouldn’t just shoot him on sight—they blew up a Howitzer together, they’ve got history—but what does he really know about how he’d react if Clint just waltzes into his apartment and breaks up his super secret Shadow meeting?

Should he just tiptoe out and start over? Knock this time? That seems dumb—

 _Hold on_. Are the _other_ Shadows in there with him? Is this, like, a _Shadow convention_?

Now _that’s_ a thought. He could find out who they all are in one go—maybe finally get an idea of what the hell is going on, for a change. That would be super satisfying…

All right all right, compromise plan time. He’ll just take a quick peek inside the room with the voices. Just a glimpse, that’s all he wants. _Then_ he’ll sneak back out and knock. They’ll never know he was there.

Clint is _great_ at compromise plans.

He slinks through the living room, presses his back against the far wall to grab a peek though the doorway at the room beyond—also empty—then hugs the wall through that one as well, silent on bare feet. The voices are louder in the room beyond, they must all be in the mystery room he passed through before on his way to the kitchen.

He takes a silent, steadying breath, and slips around the wide archway—

… right into a small round chill in the middle of his forehead. The muzzle of a gun.

His eyes cross for a moment, trying to focus on the barrel, before he sorts them out and looks past the gun to the face behind it.

Dark hair, drawn back, slender face, thin mouth set in a grim line… _oh my god it_

_…it’s fucking…_

It’s fucking _Maria Hill._

What the _fuck_

The voices in the other room stop, diversion concluded. 

Hill presses the gun a little harder into his skin.

“I…! You…! What… I can explain!”

Hill’s snort is equal parts disdain and disgust. She grabs his shoulder and pushes him in front of her, the muzzle of the gun sliding around to the back of his skull, digging in.

“Move,” she says.

Clint stumbles forward, his brain metaphorically clutching its hair and shrieking as it runs around and around in a tight little circle. He’s pretty sure he shot Maria Hill. He remembers something like that. It was right after he murdered Nick Fury. He’s pretty sure she’s _dead_.

_What…_

They walk through the dining room into the room beyond.

There are three other people inside, so he was wrong about that. A tall, hard-looking man with light hair, a scar curving along his jaw. The man’s hand is resting on a long table in the middle of the room, scattered with papers and maps. Some guy in camo is standing at the wall behind him, clearly muscle of the interchangeable bodyguard variety. There’s another man in a black suit at the head of the table, nearest the entryway Hill just marched him though, his back to them.

Hill stops him behind the man in the suit.

“I…” Clint starts.

“Shut up,” she snaps.

The blonde man looks Clint over, eyes cold. “I have to say I don’t think much of your security,” he says. Clint doesn’t recognize his accent, something eastern European, smoothly distinguished. He’s not talking to Clint, face angled politely to the man in the suit.

Clint watches the man’s black-sloped shoulders rise and fall in a sigh. He turns around.

It’s Phil Coulson.

Sound drops out of Clint’s world, replaced by the jagged roar of his own breathing sawing against his eardrums from the inside. There’s not enough oxygen in the room. There isn’t… he can’t…

…

There’s a hand on the back of his neck. A hand on his neck. Like that time in Manhattan. Like that time Coulson put him into the cab outside the bar in Manhattan. That time… that time… It’s the same… warm, strong fingers… Coulson’s hand. Coulson’s hand is pushing Clint’s head down between his knees. Clint’s on a chair. He doesn’t remember sitting down…

“Breathe,” Coulson says.

That voice pushes a lightning strike of ice through his veins. Clint tries to drag in a breath but there’s nowhere to put it, the air backing up in his throat, choking him. He tries again but his lungs have stopped working, black spots crowding into his peripheral vision, narrowing his world to the smooth marble tile under his bare feet and the tips of Coulson’s shiny black dress shoes.

“I said, breathe, Clint.” Coulson’s hand on his neck is heavy, implacable; pinning him down, anchoring him in place.

Time passes, apportioned into segments by the drumbeat of his heart slamming against the cage of his ribs. He must be breathing or he’d be dead by now, he thinks. He can’t feel it, though, can’t feel anything but Coulson’s grip on him. Clint lifts a hand to shove the hand away, and tries not to mourn when Coulson lets him go.

There’s movement above him as Coulson straightens. “All of you, get out,” he tells the room. His voice is flat and even. Not loud, but utterly commanding.

There’s the sound of footsteps retreating somewhere outside Clint’s field of view. He wants to look up, to understand what’s happening, to ask one of the millions of questions that are hammering against the walls of his skull, but he can’t do that and not pass out at the same time.

More shoes stop at the edge of what’s left of his world, just outside the boundary of the chair. “You sure about this?” Hill asks somewhere above him.

“Leave the gun,” Coulson says.

More footsteps. And somewhere, distantly, the sound of a door slamming.

The black shoes disappear. There’s a scrape as a chair is pulled out from the table. The sound of someone sitting in it.

Silence stretches in the room, which now feels empty. That means there should be more air in it, right? Clint’s breathing sounds desperate and wrong in the abandoned space, harsh, edged with panic. He concentrates on forcing his lungs to work, clutches at his shirt to keep his heart from beating out of his chest.

He can _feel_ Coulson’s eyes on him.

“I watched you die,” Clint tells the floor. He doesn’t recognize his own voice, small and airless. Broken.

There’s a faint rustle, the brush of expensive fabric. Coulson crossing his legs. Clint doesn’t have to look up to know. The sound and the action are intimately familiar from the countless hours he’s spent in Coulson’s office, bent over a tablet in one of the visitor’s chairs, or the couch that showed up a year or so in—supposedly filling out after-actions, but really just sort of drifting, listening: to the quiet tap of Coulson’s fingers at his keyboard, the ceramic clack of a coffee mug set aside on the surface of the desk, the papery rustle of forms and reports, the footsteps of people passing in the hall outside. Things that altogether had begun to feel more like home to him than his place in Bed Stuy ever did. A lot more than his fancy quarters in Avenger’s Tower. Maybe more, even, than his parents house ever had.

“You died.” Clint is aware he’s repeating himself. He thinks he can be forgiven for being a little stuck on that point, though. 

“Something like that.”

“Then why… then how are you—?”

“Didn’t take,” Coulson says.

“It didn’t…” Clint chokes on his own spit, coughs desperately.

“Breathe, Clint.”

Clint grasps his knees and forces himself upright in the chair, wiping at his mouth with the back of one hand.

Coulson looks back at him impassively from his seat by the table, expression blank. It really _is_ him. It’s _him_. Sitting there, in his stupid fancy suit and tie, like the last year had never happened, like all that stuff had been the dream, not the perfectly composed man in front of him.

Clint stares, helpless to look away. Coulson lets him look, calm. Motionless.

There are differences. Subtle ones. His face is thinner, pale and harder; all tight-stretched skin over angles and planes. His eyes seem dark in this light, flat and unreflective. The default bland half-smile is absent. As if it were no longer worth the effort.

Clint finally has to close his eyes. He feels sick. This face is maybe a little different, but it’s still hard to look at. And laid over it is the face, the dead eyes, of the corpse sprawled against the wall of the helicarrier. As if Clint’s brain can’t reconcile the two images, can’t quite give up the memory… the hours he spent staring at the grainy video having somehow made it a part of him—a fixture—resistant to being replaced by new evidence.

“How did you get in here?” Coulson asks.

Clint shakes his head. Maybe if he keeps his eyes closed the battle going on behind his eyes will resolve and he can keep from puking all over Shadow’s floor. He doesn’t much care which image of Coulson wins at this point, as long as they just stop fighting.

His eyes snap open as a chair creaks, at the click of Coulson’s heels on the marble tile. He stops next to Clint’s chair. Clint looks up at him, eyes straining. He can’t seem to lift his head out of his hunched shoulders to raise his head properly.

Coulson holds out his hand. Clint stares at it stupidly for a long moment before he fishes Nat’s device out of his pocket and places it in his palm. Coulson’s lips tighten, just the barest fraction. He waits.

Clint hands over the card case with the thumbprint as well. Watches as Coulson flicks it open, studies the contents, then shuts it again with a click.

“You had help, I think,” he says.

Clint presses his lips together. He’s not volunteering _shit_. Not until someone explains how all these dead people are walking around, and everything he thought he knew about reality is really freakin wrong. _Or_ he gets some confirmation that he’s locked up in a padded cell somewhere and the past year has all been just some fucked up fantasy his mind put together after Loki took it apart.

Coulson walks back to his seat, placing the items on the table next to the gun. Instead of sitting again, he cocks a hip against the table, folds his arms, and stares calmly down at Clint like he’s quite prepared to do so for the rest of forever.

“What’s to be done about you?” he says eventually. Softly, as if he were asking himself.

Clint’s eyes widen. Coulson doesn’t look at the gun behind him on the table. He doesn’t have to. It’s something about his tone, Clint thinks. The hair stands up on the back of his neck.

He wonders what he’ll do if Coulson decides to shoot him to keep his secret. If he’ll bother trying to stop him. It almost seems all full circle-y and right that his old handler has risen from the dead just to end him, honestly. In a lot of ways he is Coulson’s creation, after all. Mercenary Clint had been on a trajectory that had an expiration date. Agent Coulson and SHIELD had stepped into the middle of that and changed everything.

Clint can’t find it in him to hold it against Coulson for finally realising he’d chosen wrong all those years ago. That he’s maybe thinking now is his chance to fix his mistake.

Coulson tilts his head, considering.

“Your timing is uncanny, Clint. I honestly don’t think you could have come here at a worse time.” He looks away, like he’s studying the paint job on the wall across the room. “Wildcard,” he says, shaking his head.

Clint gets that. He’s intimately familiar with being the monkey wrench in people’s plans.

“What I’m building is at a critical stage,” Coulson tells the wall. “All the moving parts perfectly balanced. One misstep and the whole thing falls apart. I can’t let that happen.”

Coulson looks back at him, eyes sharp and hard and piercing. Clint feels pinned in place. Caught. 

“You understand that I can’t let you leave here.”

It’s not a question. Coulson pushes off the desk, holding Clint’s eyes. The two steps he takes to Clint’s chair take a million years. The hand he lifts to Clint’s face tracks an arc at the pace of glaciers flowing. Coulson cups Clint’s jaw and stares down at him, expressionless. His hand is warm, the skin rough with calluses. The pads of his fingers brush Clint’s temple, trace the curve of his jaw, the long slope of his neck. Careful, so careful. Gentle but purposeful. 

Clint stares up through his lashes and tries to remember to breathe, everything feeling floaty and unreal. He realises he’s sort of dreamed about this, actually. This particular scenario. It generally starts with some sort of badass rescue thingy, where Coulson would find him in an abandoned warehouse after shooting, like, sixteen guys to get to him, and Clint would be tied to a chair with his shirt off, and Coulson would… I mean, okay, as far as fantasies go, it’s not terribly original, true, but he’d been pretty young when he’d fallen for his handler, so sue him.

Coulson pushes his fingers around the column of Clint’s neck, settling there to brush the heel of his thumb across Clint’s bottom lip. It would feel pretty erotic if Clint didn’t understand completely that the slightest shift in Coulson’s grip, and a little more pressure, will neatly snap his neck.

“Do—” Clint chokes a little, clears his throat. Somewhere in the past half hour he’s apparently forgotten how to speak. The lingering effects of shock, he thinks. Or that Coulson has never touched him like this before. Or maybe it’s just that all of the care and attention—the relentless concentration—that Clint has seen his handler apply to planning an assault on a Hydra base, or the overthrow of a government, seems to now be focused on the single point of his thumb stroking slowly over Clint’s lips.

“Do you have to do this here?” Clint asks. It comes out as a sort of strangled whisper.

Coulson’s fingers still. “What do you mean?”

It’s stupid. He’s knows it’s stupid but he doesn’t care. And besides, getting a last wish is only fair. No one ever said it had to be a good one.

“It’s just that… I don’t want Shadow to come home and find me decomposing on his floor.” Clint would like to think that after the night with the rope—the night Shadow spent spooning him, holding Clint in his arms as he slept, in the big, soft bed a couple of rooms away—that he might possibly feel a little bad that Clint’s resurrected ex-handler had murdered him in his dining room.

It just feels wrong to do that to Shadow. Or, at the very least, rude.

“Maybe we can go outside or…?”

Coulson pulls back, his face shifting into the first real expression Clint’s seen on it since he turned around. It’s something that’s equal parts baffled, and amused, and incredulous, all at the same time. It’s not a big gesture—none of Coulson’s expressions are—but it’s an easy one for Clint to recognise. Now that he thinks about it, he’s seen it directed at himself a million times.

It seems out of place on this version of Coulson’s lean, hard face.

The expression fades as Coulson studies him for a long, suspended, moment. Then he heaves a sigh that seems to come up from the bottom of his shoes, leans in, and kisses him. 

It takes Clint a minute to realise what’s just happened, overwhelmed by the gentle pressure on his lips, the press of Coulson’s thumb at the corner of his mouth. The shock of the contact makes him gasp—the belated apprehension of his closeness, the warmth of him, his scent, sinking into Clint all at once. Coulson takes that as an invitation to press in, his hand on Clint’s jaw angling his head just so, so that the kiss deepens, becomes perfect. Clint’s not sure when tongues happened but he’s suddenly aware that Coulson _has a taste_ , and that if he doesn’t get more of it _right now_ he will _die_. 

They kiss until Clint’s decided he’s just going to go ahead and suffocate to death so he can have one more second of the slick feel of Coulson’s mouth on his, of his breath on his neck. 

It takes him a second to realize what’s happened when he pulls back. Clint pants helplessly in place, catching his bottom lip between his teeth before he opens his eyes, chasing one last taste of him on his lips. 

“Clint,” Coulson’s voice is soft, rough in a way Clint doesn’t think he’s ever heard before. His lips brush the shell of Clint’s ear, causing a shiver to rocket down his spine. “Whose thumbprint do you think is in Natasha’s case?”

Clint is totally not ready for something as complex as a question. He doesn’t consciously will his hand to reach out and grab a handful of Coulson’s jacket to pull him back in, but that’s what it does anyway. If he can just—

_Wait… what?_

“How do you know that came from Nat?” he demands, pulling back.

Coulson just looks at him. The utterly bland ‘are you kidding me’ look is even more familiar than the other one.

Clint forces his hand to let go. “ _Fine_. I… it… obviously it’s Shadow’s thumbprint. This is his apartment, I was here before when we— well, we were… it was…”

The bland look on Coulson’s face shifts into something that, on anyone else, would be a full-on eye roll. He waits, patient as glaciers.

Something bursts sharply into Clint’s consciousness. He feels his eyes widen. He hopes they’re not as big and round as they feel. “Oh shit,” he breathes.

Coulson’s rueful smile is fractional, a mere compression of his lips.

“Oh shit oh shit oh—!”

“Are you going to pass out on me? How many times do I have to remind you to breathe tonight, Clint?”

“Oh _shit_. You…! He…! _Shadow_?!”

Coulson huffs out a laugh. “Would you prefer to call me that?”

“You’re _Shadow_?!” Clint forgets to breathe for a moment, slowly realising that he doesn’t really need to ask. He’s heard that same amused/exasperated snort filtered through a mask and a throat mic for weeks now.

“Have you… are you…? Why…?” He stutters to a halt as his brain lurches into overdrive, replaying the events of the months since the night on the roof—scrubbing through each encounter, replacing Shadow’s featureless black mask with Phil Coulson’s face.

“Oh my god,” he whispers.

“Before you say anything, I think you already know it wasn’t me every time.”

Clint doesn’t ask how he came to that conclusion. His brain is still busy replacing Shadow’s hands with _Coulson’s_ hands in his memory. His _fingers_. _Oh god._

“So,” Clint squeaks, a little desperate to stop the flow of images, “that night on the roof… the night I was shot?”

“That was me.”

“The… the peach?”

“Also me.”

“The night we… when we blew up the howitzer? That was you?”

“Yes.”

He almost doesn’t have enough air to ask the last one. “So that means the thing with the… after with the…?”

Coulson doesn’t answer. Just watches him, thumb stroking along the line of Clint’s jaw.

_Holy shit, Philip fucking Coulson, Agent of SHIELD, had tied Clint to a bed and given him erotic first aid. Jesus fucking christ._

Of course… now that he thinks about it, the combination of competent control, toe-curling sexiness, and health care seems so obviously Coulson that he can’t believe it didn’t occur to him sooner.

Coulson skims a knuckle over Clint’s cheek. “You're blushing.”

That just makes him blush harder. Which is the idea, Clint suspects. He slots his eyes at Coulson, whose smug expression confirms it.

“Are you going to explain what the hell is going on?” he demands, defensively.

Coulson’s sigh is small, a sort of resigned puff of air. He drops his hand and straightens, tugging down his jacket, settling the lines of the suit back into place. Putting his armour back on, Clint thinks; increasing the distance between them.

He wishes he hadn’t said anything.

Coulson watches that thought play out on his face. He gives Clint one of his almost-sad not-smiles and reaches down a hand. Clint takes it, and lets him tug him to his feet.

“Are you hungry?”

“I…” Clint licks his lips. “I could eat.”

_Sure. Why not. This can’t possibly get any weirder._

Coulson releases him and steps over to the table. He scoops up the little pile of gear, and checks the safety on the gun before slipping it into an inside pocket. Clint watches him, not sure how to feel about that. It reminds him of something, though.

“Um, I was supposed to deliver this.” He unhooks the little pouch from his belt and hands it over.

Coulson shoots him a hard glance as he takes it. Clint watches him unzip the top and peer inside. The extraordinary lack of any reaction whatsoever clues Clint in that something’s definitely up with the contents.

“What is it?” Clint asks.

Coulson dips in two fingers and emerges with a packet of condoms between them. The look he gives Clint is so dry it sucks all the moisture out of the universe.

_What the fuck, Natasha?!_


	16. Last Meal

Shadow’s—

…um, _Coulson’s—_

_fdsajkl;fdsajkl;dsajkl;_

…big fancy kitchen is pretty much the same as it was the last time Clint was here, pilfering candy bars out of his stupidly large refrigerator in a pair of spongebob boxers and nothing else. Well, except the light’s a little… not brighter, maybe….richer? A sort of golden glow suffuses from the tasteful track lighting and the little spotlights recessed in the ceiling. It makes the room feel warm, and intimate; light edging the stainless steel surfaces in mellow gold, thick like honey.

Clint sits on a fancy barstool the middle of the room, elbows on the smooth surface of the kitchen island, and tries not to look at Coulson’s mouth. His goddamn lips are _still_ tingling. _Jesus._

One of those tiny red boxes of raisins sits on the clean, stainless surface in front of him—empty now. Coulson had always had a supply of little red boxes of raisins, before. Clint remembers him walking through his shocky agents after a particularly bad one, handing them out as the noise died away and the blood on the walls darkened and dried. The raisins had always felt more like an absolution than a mere means to counteract low blood sugar after the adrenaline receded, stretched thin from hours of chaos and slaughter.

Clint likes the Raisin Lady on the front of the box, in her big red hat, beaming munificently, her arms full of grapes. The way she holds them close against her chest in their weird loopy basket thingy, all sort of sheltering and maternal, like she’s holding a basket full of plump green babies.

The Raisin Lady had always seems to say, ‘Look here, you, it’s going to be all right. You don’t have to replay the movie in your head of when you shot that guy in the face again. See? The sun’s out, you can see it right here on the box, all big and golden. And I’ve got this big ass basket thingy that’s all piled up with grapes. As many grapes as you need. Would you like one?’

Coulson had slid the small red box silently over the island counter to Clint without looking at him. And Clint, like the good little minion he was… like the good little minion he _is_ , apparently… had obediently eaten them—fishing them out of the box one by one on autopilot—while his dead handler, his longtime crush…

…I mean, ‘crush’ seems like kinda the wrong word for all the stuff accumulated on the shores of his heart over the years, doesn’t it? He thinks his feelings about Coulson are more like one of those log jams you get in the fast little streams out in the Northwest. Like his emotions are all a bunch of rocks and old trees and dirt and junk laid down over years and years, all tangled up and impacted, muddled and compressed into a big, confusing pile. Stuck. ‘Crush’ just doesn’t seem like the right word for that. Too small. And twee. And inadequate.

…anyway, while his longtime, resurrected _something_ … makes pancakes.

Okay. Sure. Pancakes. Let’s go with that.

Coulson’s rolled up the sleeves of his crisp white dress shirt to just under his elbows, and put on one of those apron thingies like those European TV chefs used to wear, the ones that have just the bottom part, without the bib. The apron is pristine—just as clean and pressed as his dress shirt—and sits low and snug around his trim waist, over the sleek black trousers, tied in a small tight bow.

You’d think that a man in a tie, wearing an apron, cracking eggs into a bowl in a secret underground conspiracy bunker-condo would look silly. Coulson doesn’t look silly. Despite whatever the last year has done to him—the too-lean face, the unyielding set of his mouth, the flat, dark, emotionless eyes—he still looks… I mean, he looks _good_. So familiar it makes something ache somewhere deep in Clint’s chest. Like the hole there, deep down inside somewhere, is maybe getting filled up a little just looking at him.

Clint sits with his chin in his hand and watches the shift and glide of muscle and tendon in Coulson’s forearms as he measures flour into his bowl play out in front of him like high quality porno.

And he might as well be watching really good pay for view, actually—the man in front of him as distant and untouchable as images on a screen. Coulson’s hands are the same, the economy of his movement, the achingly familiar profile, but for all of that, there’s something fundamental missing, Clint thinks. Something that whatever had happened to him on the helicarrier had taken or buried or changed.

And he may have taken off his jacket but Coulson’s armour is still very much in place. Whatever familiarity Clint and Shadow had built, whatever rapport, isn’t present with this guy, making pancakes with the kind of precision that means he’s hardly aware of what his hands are doing at all. Clint remembers this. It means all of his attention is fully inward, as if he were playing chess in his head; plotting out the move he intends to make next February. There’s a vertical wrinkle in the space right between his eyebrows that only appears when he’s focused so internally that he hasn’t noticed he needs to make the effort to smooth the muscle there.

It doesn’t look like he’s paying the slightest bit of attention to Clint. Which is fine, really. Because while Clint had sort of worked out what he wanted to say to Shadow, he has no idea how to talk to Phil Coulson. 

On the counter, a hands-reach from Clint’s empty box of raisins, is Hill's gun. Coulson had taken it out of his pocket before he’d draped the sleek black suit-jacket over a chair in the corner. Beside the gun is the packet of condoms. The small pile of items seems like some sort of metaphorical tableau about Clint’s possible future.

Clint sighs and shifts his head to his other hand. There's a whole raft of questions he should be aggressively asking, he can feel them bouncing around inside his brain like angry birds. He just doesn’t think he’s got the energy to try and pry the answers out of head-chess-playing Coulson right now, though. So he sits instead, and watches Coulson Pancake Porno, feeling the Raisin Lady’s sugar spread out through his system, trying as best he can not to think about the lip tingle thing, and waits.

Eventually Coulson sits the bowl down carefully, nudging the spoon into precise alignment against the side. He stares at it for a moment before looking up at Clint. The little forehead wrinkle disappears as Coulson’s attention emerges from wherever it’s been, to hold Clint’s gaze. Clint watches as some kind of internal battle resolves itself behind his eyes, as some decision slots into place. Clint scans his expression for a clue as to what it is, then gives up. Like’s that’s ever worked. Even before.

Coulson watches him for a moment more, eyes moving, mouth just this side of unhappy. His hand abruptly lifts from his side, a helpless movement, and Clint thinks Coulson might touch his face again. Just for an instant he seems to sway forward—his fingers centimetres from Clint’s jaw—before whatever it is passes, and he blinks, and awkwardly drops his hand.

Clint remembers to breathe. Coulson turns away.

“There's a camp stove over there,” he says, back to not looking at Clint again. He hooks his chin at a low line of cabinets. "Can you get it for me?"

Clint looks behind himself to locate the cabinet, then obediently slides off the stool to comply. He’s aware that he’s putting his back to both Coulson and the gun on the counter. He does it anyway.

"Grab the crepe pan, too.”

Clint turns mid-crouch to stare up at him. "You have a crepe pan.”

Coulson looks back at him impassively. "What's wrong with having a crepe pan?"

Clint fishes the gear out of the cabinet, trying to picture Shadow—dammit, _Coulson_ —hanging out in his post apocalyptic secret bunker making crepes. Sure. Why not.

He puts the gear down on the kitchen island. Coulson begins setting up the stove, his movements controlled and precise, as Clint slides back onto his barstool.

“Nothing, I guess. Although if someone had told be I'd be having crepes for dinner with Agent Coulson tonight I’d have said they’re crazy.”

“I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” Coulson says, deadpan.

“Oh well, you know, I _am_ very busy living my best post apocalyptic life and all.”

Coulson nods. Like who isn't.

“So how’ve _you_ been?” Clint asks, trying to work past the deep sense of unreality about this whole situation. “Are you going to tell me why you're not dead?"

Coulson slots a slim cylinder of propane into a connector on the stove. He points at a small paper-wrapped parcel at the side of the counter, and holds out his hand. "Butter,” he says.

Clint leans over to retrieve the little bundle. Hands it over.

 _Back to ignoring his questions. Coulson really _is_ Shadow. Fine._ “Well, are you going to tell me why Hill's not dead?"

Coulson sets the pan on the ring and clicks on the starter. Adjusts the small gas flame.

Clint sighs. “Can you at least tell me if you’re going to shoot me? It just seems like, if this is my last meal, I should know. Like, work on really enjoying it, kind of thing.”

Coulson unwraps the butter and wedges off a corner of it into the pan with his spoon, where it sizzles happily. The scent of fresh butter fills the kitchen and Clint’s belly creaks with longing. He presses his palm against it, too late to stifle the sound.

Coulson glances up at him, his set, blank expression sliding into something unhappy, eyes softening. He looks away quickly. “There’s syrup in the fridge,” he says.

Clint slides off the stool again to rummage in Shadow’s enormous refrigerator.

Behind him Coulson pours batter into the pan. The sweet smell of flour and milk, vanilla and eggs, joins the aroma of butter in the air. Clint wonders where he got all this fresh stuff. If it was the same magic fairyland, that is obviously not the New York Clint knows, where he found peaches.

Clint pokes through the contents of the fridge before he finds a familiar bottle in the back shaped like a plump lady in a dress. “Oh hey, the good stuff,”he says, pulling it out.

Coulson hmms noncommittally as he turns over a pancake. Clint remembers Coulson used to keep his own stash of real maple syrup from some obscure single batch sugarhouse in Vermont or some shit in his go-bag for road-trip diners. The snob.

“Please. Mrs Buttersworth’s is the paragon of pancake syrups. Your opinion is weird and wrong.”

Coulson utterly fails to rise to the bait. Clint watches him slide pancakes onto a plate. Watches him pick up the ladle and pour more batter into the pan.

I mean, this is just fucking awkward.

“You know, if the only thing we can talk about is pancakes, this is gonna get boring fast."

"I'm already bored," Coulson says.

"Oh, I'm sorry,” Clint says, anger blooming in his chest, “am I keeping you? I'll just show myself out then, shall I?”

Coulson’s gaze flickers to the gun on the counter. “I’d prefer it if you stayed,” he says. He slides the plate across the counter. “Eat. I know you’re hungry.”

Clint grabs the bottle of Buttersworth’s by the neck and contemplates strangling it in frustration. This is definitely not how he pictured his dramatic meeting with Shadow going. He hasn’t got the slightest damn idea what’s happening here and it’s pissing him off.

“Not until you tell me what’s going on! Are you going to try and keep me locked up here in your secret swinging bachelor pad? Do you really think that’s going to work?”

Coulson calmly pokes at his pancakes, something resigned in his expression.

Clint angry-pours syrup into his plate, sets the bottle back down on the counter with a glassy thunk. He glares at his ex-handler, wishing he could pound his fists against the metaphorical wall between them.

And all at once realizes what’s off about him.

Some random person on the street might see the man expressionlessly staring down at his crepe pan as nothing more than a weirdly focused, moderately proficient pancake maker. Clint, who is beginning to remember the hours spent staring at him in countless briefings and meetings and, occasionally, though the high-powered optics on a sniper rifle, waiting endlessly for a mark to show up, and—furthermore—has very, _very_ good eyesight, abruptly knows better.

He's off balance. Feeling his way. Almost as if this version of Coulson has forgotten how to… just talk. As if it’s been a long time since he'd communicated with anyone in any way that wasn't a direct order. A part of some mission. A method to facilitate some task.

Almost like… Shadow’s mask, the full body armour, the anonymity, had made it easier for him to talk to Clint like a normal person. And now, without its protection, he’s at a loss.

Clint puts his fork down, the anger draining away. _What happened to him during the year Clint hadn't been there to watch his back?_

The logjam in his heart shifts and grinds, the river of his emotion pushing at it.

He picks up the fork again and pokes at the pancake on his plate. Well, it’s not _his_ fault Coulson’s been alone for the past year. If he’d bothered to actually _tell him he was alive_ , maybe he could have…

The logjam shifts again, creaking, and compacts a little harder. He closes his eyes, suddenly not hungry.

…

It’s kind of a relief, honestly, when a bunch of guys with guns burst into the kitchen.

Clint freezes with the fork halfway to his mouth. Wonders for a second if his brain has just given up on him and now he’s seeing shit or something.

“Don’t move!” a couple of them shout awkwardly over one another, crowding through the doorway in full cowboy camo.

Coulson raises a hand to his forehead like this whole day is giving him a headache. He rubs briefly at his eyebrows then reaches down to click off the camp stove.

“I said don’t move!”

“Safety first,” Coulson says.

"You carrying?" Clint hisses out of the side of his mouth.

Coulson snorts derisively.

“Alright, you don’t have to get snippy, I was just being polite."

There’s a chorus of ‘Shut ups!’

Clint eyes the men, sizing them up. They’ve got paramilitary bullshit awkwardly strapped and buckled all over them, random comic book pouches and military surplus bargains that are clearly mostly for show. Clint gets that it’s hard to get good kit in the post-apocalypse, but the getup on these guys is inspired less from actual military and more from Rambo movies. Their guns are shitty, and he doubts they have a full magazine between them. They kinda remind him of the idiots he and the Reavers fought at what everyone’s now calling the Battle of Mott Street.

Still, hard to miss even with a shitty gun when you’re less than a metre away.

Clint shifts half his attention to Coulson's hands, specifically the right one, as it rests casually on the counter next to the camp stove, and waits. 

The guy he’d seen in the room earlier, the tall blonde one with the scar, pushes his way through the men crowded around the doorway. He stops in front of them, and cocks his head. Then smiles thinly at Coulson.

“I believe I said something earlier about working on your security,” he says, pleasantly. “It’s not like you, Director, to be taken unaware twice in one day. If I’d known you were so easily distracted we might have had this conversation earlier.”

 _Director?_ Clint glances up before returning his attention to Coulson’s hands. Just in time to see him do that little tightening of his lips thing, the one that someone really unobservant might mistake for a smile at 50 paces.

Scar-guy turns his head to give Clint a slow once over, like he’s trying to work out the attraction. And failing. His eyes slide away to smile at Coulson again.

“I guess there’s no accounting for taste.”

"I believe our business is concluded for the evening, Commander,” Coulson says. “Don't let me keep you."

“As for that,” the scar-guy says…

… wait, did Coulson just call him ‘ _Commander?_ ’ Where has he… is that… what the—!?

“… I find myself in a position to renegotiate our terms," he goes on. "I no longer see any reason why you should have both units. Indeed, I no longer see any reason why you should have _any_."

“Wait, wait, wait, hold on!” Clint demands. “ _This_ is Commander? Commander as in _Company_ Commander? _That_ Commander?”

Both Coulson and the guy—Commander—turn to him with the kind of patient, slightly pitying look you might give a village idiot.

“Focus, Barton,” Coulson says.

“You can’t just—!”

Coulson _looks_ at him. Clint’s mouth snaps shut.

Commander turns to one of his goons. "Take Williams and Pierce and go collect the Mark 90s," he says. He turns back to smile nastily at Coulson, “…and anything else of interest you happen to run across while you’re at it. You'll find them both amusingly displayed on robe stands in the bedroom. Take them back to Base 2, we'll join you after we’re done here.”

Clint's not sure what a Mark90 is. But the only thing he remembers occupying a robe stand in Shadow's bedroom is a robe. And, come to think of it, Shadow's battle suit. There's two? He tries to think back past the chaos of the past day, the past weeks. The Asset had lost his suit, hadn't he? He was wearing the neoprene under-Shadow-suit when Clint pulled him out of the Manhattan Detention Center. Is _that_ why there's two of them?

“That’s not what we agreed to,” Coulson says quietly. "I urge you to reconsider."

“All right,” Commander says. He cocks his head to one side and cuts his eyes to the ceiling in an exaggerated movement. Then straightens and grins, like a predator. “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid my mind’s quite made up. It may surprise you to learn, Director, that there are a number of us out in the city that are tired of you and your people lording it over the rest of us. I intend to dismantle your organization with my new battle suits. And use the resources you’ve stolen to carve out my own empire.”

Outside the room are sounds of people moving several heavy somethings through the apartment. Doors slamming shut.

Clint glances up again. Coulson's expression has relaxed into his polite ‘Please continue with your villainous monologue’ face. He’s stalling. Clint settles in and waits for his cue.

He and Coulson—especially new, mean Coulson—may not know how to talk to one another, but they do know how to do _this_.

He concentrates on Coulson’s hands and waits.

"Of course,” Commander continues, “I'll need to dismantle _you_ first.”

Clint's fingers tighten on the fork in his hand.

There's another slam and the sounds of scuffling die away.

"Well then,” Commander says with finality, “goodbye." He nods at the rest of his minions, still clustered around the door. “Kill both of them," he says, as he turns on his heel and departs. There’s silence in the room as the sound of his footsteps fade. Distantly the door slams shut.

The three men—actually the five men, there were apparently two more waiting in the room beyond—tighten their grips on their weapons. Clint’s already inventoried the guns—three handguns, a rifle, and what looks like an antique PKM, which is clearly not loaded.

They shuffle amongst themselves, working up to it. The one with the shouldered rifle clears his throat.

“Which ah y’all got bullets?" he asks.

"Shh!" The machine gun guy hisses. "Way to tip them off, dumbass!”

“Fuck you,” rifle-guy says, “there ain’t no reason ta—“

The beardy guy with one of the handguns, who looks like he’s actually been trained on how to hold it, snaps “Shut up!" and tightens his finger on the trigger.

Clint stares at Coulson's hand. _Come on... come on…_

Coulson's index finger twitches right.

Several things happen at once.

Clint over-hands his fork at Beardy. Time slows as it flips through one beautiful turn before embedding itself in his eye. Clint uses his follow-through momentum to plant a hand on the kitchen island and somersault himself over the top of it, going right, grabbing up Hill's gun as he goes. He thumbs off the safety as he rolls to the floor on the other side. Coulson breaks left an instant before everyone starts firing at targets that suddenly aren’t where they were anymore.

‘Everyone’ turns out to be the three people in Commander’s crew who actually have ammunition. Still, the noise is deafening, echoing off the walls and Shadow’s pristine stainless kitchen appliances. The two guys with empty weapons give up the fiction, stupidly breaking formation to lurch forward—probably with some idea of using their guns as clubs, who the hell knows. Gun-smoke from the badly maintained weapons fouls the air, obscuring them from their assailant’s view as he and Coulson crouch behind the kitchen island. The smoke’s not thick enough, though, to hide the five morons who are now milling around the kitchen searching for them, completely without cover.

It’s a fucking clown show.

“Your two o’clock,” Coulson barks as he draws a handgun from god-knows-where, leans out and fires at someone at ten.

Clint obediently pops up and shoots Mr Two O’clock as Coulson’s target goes down. Then two more shots and Hill’s pistol clicks empty, as the guy behind screams and collapses. Dammit, stupid apocalypse! He’d thought the gun’d felt light.

“I’m out,” Clint hisses as he ducks back behind the island. Coulson pops up and gets off three more rounds before he joins him. There’s the heavy sound of bodies hitting the floor.

The noise and cursing stop, Clint’s ears ringing in the sudden silence. It’s all over in less than a minute.

Coulson shoots him a glance. “You’re getting half-pay for this. I’m having to do all the work.”

Clint grins suddenly, the movement stretching his face in a way that feels weird and unfamiliar. “Didn’t know I was on your payroll anymore, sir.”

“You’ll always be my sniper, Barton,” Coulson says, checking his weapon. The pocket pistol is small, and probably only holds seven or eight rounds. Although there’s no telling how Coulson has modified it; he’d always liked tinkering with his weapons. Like the man himself, they tended to end up never quite what they seem.

Clint tries not to blush. _His sniper._ “Not much good as a sniper without a gun, boss.”

Coulson hums. “Yes, the world-ending alien apocalypse really _is_ inconvenient.”

“That’s what _I_ was thinking!”

“Nevertheless, I do need to get those suits back,” Coulson looks up. “Could I interest you in a job?”

Clint honest to god laughs. He can’t help it. “Gonna pay me in peaches?”

Coulson’s faint look of amusement slides into something focused and deep that stops Clint’s breath in his throat. His gaze flickers down to Clint’s mouth, some spark in his eyes that are dark now in a completely different way than they were before.

Clint inhales sharply. _Oh shit. That is just—_

Coulson blinks and looks away with a frown. He stands, tucking the gun away, then unwinds the apron from his hips, all the while very much not looking at Clint.

Clint needs to take moment to redirect the blood flowing south, into his _legs,_ instead of—you know—before he gets up as well, just in time to see Coulson toss the discarded apron onto the counter. He watches, shuffling his feet, as Coulson shrugs into his jacket and smooths down the tie. Watches as whatever just happened disappears behind the armour. 

Coulson holds out his hand. “The gun,” he says.

Clint hands over Hill’s empty pistol.

“I don’t suppose you have anymore ammo?”

“Let’s see.” Coulson places the gun on the counter, then turns to begin methodically going through cabinets and drawers, pulling out weapons. A little pile of lethal metallic things grows on the counter behind him. Because of course Phil Coulson keeps ordinance in the junk drawers of his kitchen.

Clint wanders over to his plate of pancakes, which seemed to have survived the encounter with Commander’s troops with only a light coating of plaster dust, likely from one of the jerks slowly cooling on the floor stupidly shooting at the ceiling.

He slides onto the barstool and looks around. He'd feel a little bad about the dead guys, but the more he looks at them the more he realises these are from the same mould as the assholes who tried to kill Callie’s kids at the orphanage. It wasn't a fair fight, but he's not sorry about shooting them.

“You called that guy ‘Commander,” Clint says, trying to brush the plaster dust off. “The only Commander I know is the guy whose castle we assaulted at the MDC.”

Coulson pulls out something that looks like one of those novelty ninja throwing stars, frowns at it, and tosses it on the pile. "That's right."

Clint picks up Mrs. Buttersworth. The pancakes have absorbed all the syrup he'd poured on them before, which makes them extra awesome even if they are all cold and kinda congealed. He pops open the cap and upends the bottle, glugging out a generous pour.

"But you're working with the guy."

"We had an agreement,” Coulson says, distracted.

Clint looks around for his fork and grimaces. Oh yeah, that's right. He picks up Coulson's spoon and taps it against the side of the bowl to get the batter off. Then scoops up a big gooey pile of pancakes and syrup and regards it thoughtfully.

“Commander and his gang attacked the orphanage, did you know that? We just barely fought them off."

"I knew it was a possibility."

"I thought you came to help. I mean, Shadow was there and... he was fighting them, fighting Commander. And they shot him and I thought... well, anyway, that wasn't you, was it?"

Coulson shuts a cabinet with a solid thunk. "You know it wasn't."

"What were you... were you just going to… I mean, you wouldn’t have just let them move in on us, right?” Clint lowers his spoon, watches as a bead of syrup overruns the edge to drip slowly to the plate below. “You wouldn’t have let them kill those kids just because… because it wasn't your turn to babysit me that night….” He looks up. “Right?”

Coulson sighs and turns around. He leans back against the counter and folds his arms over his chest.

"Clint. You are one person. One person with an uncanny ability to get into trouble. You may find it hard to believe but solving your problems is not actually my primary mission here. Maybe you’ve forgotten that the planet has been subjugated and enslaved by an invading alien hoard? That the Chitauri—not to mention in-fighting, and disease and starvation—are slowly decimating the population of the planet to what may be irrecoverable levels if something isn’t done to stop the process?

“The forces at work in new New York--the entire East Coast-- exist in a delicate balance. And the longer this goes on, the more petty squabbles for power drain the resources out of the landscape, and the people, the more quickly we become easy targets, and really, quite excellent slaves. Our ability to recover from this, to do something about it, is balanced on the head of a pin. The window for effective resistance is closing.

“I and a few others are all that’s left of SHIELD. Do you really think we have time to stand guard duty over your orphanage?”

Clint winces. Maybe he should have known that Shadow’s—that Coulson’s—plans extended much further than keeping Clint from bleeding out on rooftops, and blowing up one lone howitzer. And even saving a handful of hungry kids. Still… it kinda hurts to hear it.

He puts down the spoon. Stares at his plate.

Coulson’s voice gets a little softer, but there is still steel in it. “You must understand that this is bigger than you. That it is bigger than all of us. There are no higher stakes.”

“But then… why dress up as Shadow? And who’s that other guy? And then the—why all of this? I don’t understand—”

Some small muscle ticks along the side of Coulson's jaw. “Let's just say that I owe a debt. And that debt puts me in a position where an ally can apply considerable pressure to alter the course of my plans. _Temporarily_."

"Are you saying that I'm--"

"Yes. I am. Because s—they—owes you a debt. Or that's what they think anyway. And so this whole comedy plays out inexorably, and pieces move around, while the chessboard, and the table under that, decays beneath us all.”

Clint pushes away the plate. "I didn't ask for any of this."

"No, you did not. And yet, here we are. And without my Mark 90s my current list of assets now consists of two empty guns, a pile of worthless scrap," he waves at the counter behind him, "and _you_. If you're going to help me get my tech back, then I need your head in the game. Can you follow me or not?"

Clint looks down at his plate. Is there anywhere he wouldn't follow him? He can't think of anywhere. Clint had even done his best to follow him when he thought he was dead.

"Yeah," he says softly. He looks up, his smile small and kinda painful. “I’m your sniper, aren't I?"

Coulson stares at him for a long moment, still as stone, not even seeming to breathe. Then turns back around to his cabinets.

"Come over here and see if any of this junk appeals to you," he says over his shoulder. "I don’t suppose the people we shot have anything worth keeping?”

“I—” Clint clears his throat. “I can check, but it looked like we’d be better off with a handful of forks.” He slides off the stool and approaches Coulson's sad pile of junk drawer weaponry. He pokes through it with one finger, hyper-aware of how close they’re standing together. Like he can almost feel the heat of Coulson’s body through the fabric of the suit, as if the thin layer of air next to his skin were somehow reaching out to him, trying to close some kind of connection. He pretends to concentrate on the objects in front of him, reaches over to pluck a small knife out of the far edge of the pile just so he can bump their shoulders together, distracted by Coulson’s scent. 

The knife slips in his hand. “Ow!” He shakes his finger, a tiny drop of blood emerging.

Coulson snorts. “Nice work, Specialist. If there were a machete in that pile, I’d be worried you’d cut your head off.”

Clint resists the urge to stick the wounded finger in his mouth. “You know, I don’t really remember you being such a dick.”

“When Natasha kicked you in the head on the helicarrier she must have damaged something, then. I’ve always been a dick, Barton.”

Clint grins then sobers. “You knew about that.”

Coulson reaches out and picks up a throwing knife. Aligns it very precisely with the one lying next to it. “Not then. Later. I had just assumed—well, let’s just say that the rest of Loki’s thralls did not fare so well.”

Clint thinks that nothing about the last year could be described as ‘well.’

“But you never checked.”

“No.” Coulson adjusts the knife in millimetre increments. “I—” He shuts his mouth, jaw clenching.

“I’m not looking for an apology or anything. I get that you’re busy, trying to save the world and everything, I just thought…” Clint trails off, hands stilling, gripping the edge of the counter. “If you’d needed m—”

Coulson straightens up and moves away abruptly. “We’re wasting time. Take what you want and let’s go.” He bends to jerk a gun out of the hands of one of the bodies on the floor, using more force than seems strictly necessary.

Clint gathers up the throwing knives and a few more odds and ends, tucking them away with the rest of the stuff he’s already wearing, following Coulson out of the kitchen.

Clint finds him standing in the room beyond with the grim, focused look he always used to get right before a mission, unconsciously reaching up to smooth the dark silk tie against his chest. Clint hesitates for just an instant, then steps up to Coulson’s left side, half a step behind him, on his shoulder. Clint’s side. _His place._ And, yes, he realizes all at once, they have sides. Just like a lover knows which side of the bed to slide into at the end of a day, without having to think about it.

And for the first time since he woke up on the hellicarrier with Natasha’s boot-print on his face Clint feels like he’s exactly where he needs to be. The logjam in his heart creaks happily. It’s not unstuck—not by a long shot—but there’s water moving through it. It feels good.

“What’s the plan, boss?”

Coulson brings up his hand to peer at the heavy stainless watch on his wrist. “The tracker I placed on my suit stopped moving 6 minutes ago. We're going to…” he pokes at the watch, “…Soho to get my tech back. Are you ready?”

“Lead the way.”

They march through Shadow’s apartment like a conquering army. Which is why it’s extra embarrassing when, a instant after Coulson's cleared the corridor, someone grabs Clint right outside the apartment door.


	17. Fallen

“You’ve got to be kidding m—!”

Barton’s outraged shout cuts off abruptly, ends with a sharp grunt of pain.

Phil sighs and resists the urge to raise a hand and rub at his forehead again. He turns around slowly, feeling something like a sense of inevitability settling over him, already knowing what he’ll find.

One of Commander’s arms is locked like a blade across Barton’s throat, a handgun fisted in the other, the barrel pressed to his temple. Eriksen—and Phil refuses to keep thinking of him as ‘Commander’ at this point. After all, his clearest memory of the man is at a SHIELD Christmas party in ’01 where Eriksen’d spent half the night drunk and singing Nordic ballads, loudly and terribly, with a lampshade on his head—holds the smaller man easily. Eriksen is taller, with a longer reach, and has regular access to food and healthcare. He is also very, very well trained, Phil knows. He was on the board of his last SHIELD certification. The last one before the world went to hell.

Eriksen had probably been waiting behind the door. Phil should have seen this coming. He _would_ have seen this coming if not for the injection of random chaos that follows Barton around like a dog on its master’s heels, chasing both Phil’s plans and his composure up metaphorical trees with good-natured abandon.

Of course, if Clint hadn’t intruded into his existence exactly when and how he did, Phil wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place. So there’s that.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” Eriksen says, a mild reproach. “I believe I left quite specific instructions.”

The gun looks like a toy in his fist. It’s a .38. They used to call guns like that ‘Saturday Night Specials’ when Phil was growing up. It’s junk—small, cheap, easy to manufacture, common on the street. Still, at point-blank, 264 foot-pounds of force, generated by what is most likely a 147-grain bullet, at 900 feet per second out of a 4-inch barrel, is more than enough to solve Phil’s current Barton problem.

It’s tempting.

Barton attempts to say something. Likely something intended to be either funny or painfully self-sacrificing. Eriksen gives him a brutal shake, tightening the arm at his neck. It’s ironic that his arm is perfectly poised to crush Barton’s windpipe; something Phil had contemplated doing himself not an hour ago.

Of course, he’d ended up kissing Barton instead. Yet more proof of his unique ability to wreck havoc on people and their plans.

“Sorry,” Phil says. He doesn’t bother looking at Eriksen, the man has always been as predictable as the tides. Instead he watches Barton.

Phil can read the intent in his body as easily as newsprint, the bunched tension in muscle and sinew, the subtle repositioning of his weight, the stacking of bone and tissue over his center of gravity; gathering himself to strike. Barton obviously doesn’t remember Eriksen, if he ever met him, but he must know that in his current state—unarmed, half-starved and ravaged by a year of self destruction—he’s outmatched. It won’t stop him from trying, though, if he thinks it will somehow help Phil. 

In the early days Phil had wondered what he’d done to make Barton think he needed that kind of help. It had taken him some time to work out that it was Barton’s version of laying his cloak over mud puddles so Phil could cross the street without getting his shoes wet.

Loyalty. Love.

He’s tempted to just stand here and let whatever Barton’s got in mind happen. See if Eriksen is equal to the golden retriever of random mayhem that is about to be unleashed upon him. The idea appeals to him; two threats eliminated, two problems solved, just like that. Efficient. The kind of solution he prefers.

He won’t do it, though. He’d like to tell himself it’s because it’s distasteful to waste resources like that.

It’s not the real reason.

“Barton,” he barks. Clint’s eyes snap up to meet his. Phil shakes his head, a movement so small that perhaps only someone with Barton’s exceptional eyesight could perceive it.

For an instant there is defiance in him. Phil holds his eyes.

_Wait. Wait for me._

The hot, liquid sense of satisfaction that curls in Phil’s gut as he watches Barton struggle to obey is almost sexual in its intensity. His capitulation is exquisite. It always has been, from the first day Phil had trained it into him.

Eriksen clears his throat, sensing that he’s somehow lost his audience. “I’m afraid I don’t find your apology convincing, Director.”

Phil releases Barton’s eyes and represses another sigh. Eriksen’s really gotten into the whole post-apocalyptic super-villain thing. It’s really annoying.

“I was just being polite. What brings you back?” Phil asks, pleasantly.

“I provide my lieutenants with panic buttons. Two of them just went off. It seemed appropriate that I investigate.”

Phil nods. 

“I don’t suppose any of them are still alive?”

“No,” Phil says.

Eriksen frowns. “You know how difficult it is to get good people.”

“You’d better start looking,” Barton chokes out.

“Shh,” Eriksen hisses into Barton’s hair. The corded tendon of his forearm tightens. “The grownups are talking.”

Clint grits his teeth.

_Wait,_ Phil blinks at him. Although he knows Eriksen’s attempt to goad Barton into doing something stupid is completely ineffectual. Barton is impervious to insults. There’s no possible insult he hasn’t already self-inflicted, that he doesn’t already believe on some level about himself.

“What are we talking _about_ , Mr. Eriksen?”

“That’s ‘Commander,’ please. Only that I hope you can see my point of view when I say it’s in my best interest that you and your—” he digs the gun into Barton’s temple, “ _asset_ not be running around the city, blowing up my guns. We had an understanding. You betrayed me.”

“I can see how you think that,” Phil says reasonably.

“I’m glad you agree. You can hardly blame me for attempting to retaliate. It’s only fair.”

Phil hums something noncommittal, and makes a slight adjustment to his patient listening face.

“This is a bit awkward,” Eriksen says eventually. “Since I’m under no illusion that I can get you both before you shoot me.”

Phil nods, encouragingly. Sensible.

“I _can_ kill this one, though,” Eriksen says. “Although I would prefer not to have the contents of your mercenary’s skull all over my flak jacket. It’s difficult enough to keep clean as it is.”

Phil nods again. The lack of a dry cleaners in the post apocalypse is absolutely one of the worst things about it, he’s well aware. He waits for the train of Eriksen’s logic to chug all the way into the station. It’s taking forever.

“And so we are at an impasse.” Eriksen sighs. “I admit I could have planned this better.”

“I don’t like to judge, but…” Phil shrugs.

“You’ve proved to be somewhat more resourceful than I gave you credit for. I admit my mistake.”

Coulson inclines his head. “Thank you.”

“I suppose you’d like to know how I…”

Phil tunes Eriksen out, nodding at appropriate places as he drones on.

Clint’s brow scrunches up. Like he’s trying to work out if this kind of exchange is the sort of thing Phil gets up to when Clint’s not around. Phil can almost feel his eyes roving his face searching for some signal, some message. Waiting to be released.

_His sniper._ Cocked and loaded. A clean instrument of destruction, more potent than any gun, held and loosed at Phil’s command.

The hot curl of pleasure spreads, stretches and turns its back like a sleepy animal, the heavy, warm weight of it brushing his cock. He enjoys the sensation, always has, but over the years ignoring it has become almost second nature. Phil cuts his gaze to Barton again, just for an instant. His eyes are clear, unclouded. Deep wells of blue and green and absolute trust; of rock-hard surety. Beautiful. He goes still under the weight of Phil’s stare, and he watches him slip into a place where Phil knows he finds release from the incessant assault of his own mind, the clash and tumble of his own doubts, into a state of perfect equanimity, a place where he is pure potential—a weapon that he knows Phil will use wisely and well.

It’s a state that he craves. Phil knows this because he’s made Barton crave it. It had taken years.

At the end of it he was never quite sure who had been more thoroughly seduced by the process; Barton, or himself.

Eriksen pauses for breath before going on. “… and so you can see that I—”

Phil supposes Eriksen would be mortified to learn that in the little tableau that’s currently playing out in the hall outside of Phil’s second best safe-house, he is more or less fulfilling the role of sex toy.

It’s a little surprising, honestly. Phil had thought he was done fighting this… attraction. Although attraction seems like the wrong word for his entanglement in Barton’s life. Too small to encompass the inevitability of their fall into orbit around one another, like electrons slipping their shells, inescapable as gravity. He’d thought that sort of thing had been cut out of him on the blade of Loki’s spear, gone for good. He’d been almost panicked to feel it creeping back in the weeks since Romanov had given him the Shadow suit. Had called in a debt. One he had no choice but to repay.

Phil shifts his gaze back to Eriksen, holding the mask of polite interest in place as the man pauses again, shifts his grip on Barton’s throat. Phil watches Barton swallow painfully out of the corner of his eye, notes the curve of his back gripped tight against Eriksen’s shoulder, the tension in his legs as he braces his un-balanced stance. He finds, just like Before, that he no longer has to look at Barton to be aware of him, as if the proprioception of his own body is a field that has once again expanded to include him.

Ever since that night in the ruins of a Mott Street tenement attic, when Phil had mourned the wreckage of Barton’s body from behind a mask, and fed him, and cared for him—just as he’s always done—without quite knowing what he was doing.

When he—

Phil sucks in a breath.

That’s—

_Of course. How easily he’d fallen into her trap._

Because… that had been Natasha’s plan all along, hadn’t it? A trap spun slowly and carefully, like the deadly spider she is.

Years of habit, ingrained in him—not just to use Barton, but also to care for him, protect him; to shield him from harm. She’d known that all she’d have to do is insert Barton back into Phil’s orbit, and gravity, and the gap that Phil had created for him in his own self, would take care of the rest.

If she couldn’t bring Barton in from the cold then she would make sure someone else did. And the only other person who could possibly accomplish that was, of course, him.

Phil blinks down at the floor, appalled that it’s taken him this long to perceive the gossamer threads of her snare. The golden retriever of emotional chaos that sits at Barton’s heel barks happily.

On the chessboard of his existence Phil metaphorically tips over his king. Even on his best day, he’d never been a match for them both.

Eriksen’s monolog winds down, distracted by the sea-change in the change in the atmosphere of the corridor. A boat on top of the water can still feel the seismic shift of the ocean underneath it.

“I can’t help but feel I’ve lost your attention, Director,” Phil hears him say.

Phil breathes out. A measured breath, imperceptible. He conducts an inventory of his tells, the fine muscles in his face, his stance. Nothing has changed, everything about him gone cold. Frozen. The game before him is amusing, but the larger battle’s been lost, and he no longer feels like playing. 

He looks up from under lowered brows.

“What do you want, Eriksen?” he asks, letting a little of the cold leak into his voice. Somewhere out along the perimeter of his consciousness he can feel Barton tense, sensing that the wait is almost over.

“Well,” Eriksen says uncertainly, “as I was saying—”

“Perhaps I could just have the summary.”

“Then—as I said, all things considered, we were good friends before and I believe we can look beyond this unfortunate—”

“Your terms, Eriksen,” Phil snaps.

“Yes, all right, fine. I’ll return your henchman for your promise of safety—”

Phil feels his lips compress. He corrects the microscopic contraction of the tiny muscles in his face back into the bland, smooth half smile that gives nothing away. What a stupid thing to ask for. As if there were such a thing as safety left in the world.

“I leave here and you don’t follow,” Eriksen goes on. “You stop harassing my operatives. We continue our friendship as before…”

Phil takes a step forward. Simultaneously, Barton shifts minutely in Eriksen’s grip. A shadow crosses the bigger man’s face, the faint unease of a man who suddenly feels the ground under his feet may be less solid than it seemed. 

“That seems like a concession on my part,” Phil says, voice flat.

“Only if you believe you can get to me before I kill him,” Eriksen says, trying to regain ground that he senses he’s lost somehow. His fist tightens on the gun.

Barton shifts again. Phil feels the pull of him as they come into alignment, potentiating violence. Phil watches the realization bloom on Eriksen’s face that’s he’s got a tiger by the tail. And that there’s another tiger standing right in front of him.

“I…” Erickson licks his lips, “…and I’ll return the Mk90. One of them. That’s fair isn’t it? One for me? One for you?”

Phil let’s his smile grow. He’s been reliably informed that just makes it worse. He pretends to consider the offer while he watches Barton practically vibrate in his peripheral vision, stare fixed on Phil’s right hand, the steady rise and fall of his chest signalling the paced, even breathing of someone who’s turned murder into a kind of zen.

The connection between them crackles like electricity. Phil can feel it sluicing through his veins, tracing the paths of his nervous system, liquid and hot.

He’d trained himself to ignore this, yes, Before. The Phil Coulson he used to be before Loki murdered him suppressed it out of some sense of propriety, he supposes. He doesn’t remember. The Phil Coulson he is today doesn’t know and doesn’t fucking care.

Phil takes two steps back. Tucks what Sitwell used to call the ‘murder smile’ back in where it came from.

“I agree,” he says.

“What?” both Eriksen and Barton say simultaneously.

“One of the Mk90s for you, the other for me. Let my asset go and you walk out of here unharmed. The attacks on your people stop. Fair’s fair.”

“Oh,” Eriksen says. “Well.”

“Would you like to shake on it? Your hands appear to be full.”

“Sir, what are you—?”

Phil extends his hand. “Stand down, Agent Barton,” he says, not looking at him.

Eriksen blinks and lets Barton go. Barton staggers a step, brings up a hand to massage the bruise coming up on his neck. The baffled look on his face is almost comical.

Well,” Eriksen says again, shifting the gun to his other hand. He shakes the cramp out his fingers before he extends his hand to meet Phil’s. “And so the arrangements for the—?”

“Don’t push it, Eriksen,” Phil says mildly as they shake. “Goodbye.”

Phil turns to watch the sex toy walk down the hall. Eriksen doesn’t look back. There’s the distant sound of a door slamming shut, and then silence.

“Why did you do that!” Barton demands. “Sir, I could have—”

Phil turns around to look at Barton. Whatever he sees on Phil’s face causes him to shut his mouth with a snap.

Phil takes two steps forward and reaches out, his fist closing on a handful of the t-shirt covering Barton’s chest. The fabric is old and worn, soft from wear and time. It’s some old tour t-shirt, the logo of the band now unrecognisable, silkscreen cracked and faded, a relic from another time, when things like that mattered. There’s no place for it here, in this new world stripped of all its countless illusions. Under the clear, cold fluorescent light of a silent corridor under the ruins of 240 Centre.

Phil lifts his other hand, watches as he skims it over Barton’s chest, up to that tender place where his shoulder meets his neck. There’s an old scar there. In a way, Phil had created it. He’d been the one to stitch the jagged cut back together again, hiding, under fire, on some dirty battlefield somewhere, the name of which he’s forgotten. But he remembers this; each careful stitch that he’d pressed into Barton’s flesh, feeling him come back together under his hands, his flesh left to heal in a shape of Phil’s choosing.

He tracks his fingers across the scar, listening to Barton’s shocked breath stutter in his chest. Grips the frayed collar, soft, worn thin, and deliberately—purposefully, willingly, mindfully—commits a terrible mistake. The last in a chain of mistakes that started weeks ago when Natasha Romanov appeared outside his third best safe-house and called in a debt.

Phil looks up into Barton’s blue-green eyes, round and confused, stunned into silence, and lets him see the exact moment Phil allows the walls he’s carefully constructed around himself to fall. The walls that everyone had always assumed were built to keep people out. Watches Barton’s eyes widen as he realizes that they had actually been carefully constructed _to keep something in_.

The shirt comes apart in his hands.

Barton makes some small, lost sound, as the echo of rending fabric fades in the corridor. Barton’s chest is heaving under Phil’s fists, still holding the remains of the shirt, and Barton slaps open palms flat against the wall behind himself as Phil pushes him into it.

Phil looks up, and Barton’s eyes fix on his, wide and dark, his mouth falling open as he pants for breath. Phil watches him fumble for the strategy that’s served him in all of the time Phil had known him, Before. Watches him try to summon some bit of interchangeable bravado, some wise-ass remark—a joke, a deflection. Watches him fail to find one.

“Wh—what are you doing?” he whispers, trying to apportion enough breath to speak.

“Do you want me to stop?”

“N—no I—”

Phil nods. Honesty. It’s right for this place; the cold, unflattering fluorescent light of the corridor around them, revealing in a way that incandescent light—candle and firelight—can never be. The blue-edged light strips away illusion. It’s the right light for what Phil intends to do here, for where he crosses this line.

“Coulson… Phil—”

Phil slides the wreckage he’s made of Barton’s shirt from his body, dropping the remains on the floor. He leans forward and whispers ‘ _shh_ ’ against the shell of Barton’s ear, bringing up a hand to cover Barton’s mouth, leaning into it with just enough pressure to let him know that he’s serious. Barton lets his head thump back against he wall behind him and shuts his eyes.

Phil drops his gaze to his other hand, fingers-splayed to trace a path over Barton’s bare chest, across skin criss-crossed with scar tissue. Some of the scars, like the jagged line on Barton’s neck, are his. More are not. Some are much older, experiences carved into Barton’s flesh in the life he had before he came to SHIELD, came to Phil. He dislikes those the most. The pads of his finger track across them, deliberately, a firm touch that makes Barton shiver.

Phil’s skims his hand down to his ribs, too prominent still. The light casts blue shadows underneath each individual bone, bleeds the pale skin covering them into ivory. Phil feels something twist in his chest, something sharp and angry, and bitter and sad all at once. An internal reflection of the sum of the man under his hands. Beauty wrapped up in pain.

He feels Barton’s mouth working under his hand, restless, the hard, warm exhale of his breath. Barton’s hands clench and flatten against the wall, uncertain. He doesn’t know where to put them. What to do with them. Phil lets him struggle. He has no intention of making this easier on either of them.

He leans in again, just to hear Barton’s breath catch hard in his throat, the click as he swallows. Phil slides his other hand up the highway of Barton’s bare arm, leaving behind a trail of gooseflesh, fine hair raising under his fingers. Brings it up to his neck, traces the line of the scar there again, thinking about all that times his eyes had tracked the line of it in meetings and debriefings, and watching Barton sleep in the back of transports and airplanes after the mission was done. Tracing the line of it with his eyes. But never touching.

He moves his head to skim Barton’s neck with his cheek, feeling the rasp of skin against the stubble. Turns his to trace the scar with his lips. Something he’d dreamed of doing for years.

Barton groans under his hand, strong thighs shifting against the heavy wool of Phil’s dress pants.

Phil wonders briefly what the other Phil Coulson—the person he was Before—would be doing right now with Barton trembling under his hands. He suspects he might be talking—managing expectations, defining parameters. Or perhaps the other Phil Coulson would never have allowed this to happen at all—too much distance and too many rules between them. Words and phrases and important concepts like ’fraternisation,’ and ‘chain of command’ and ‘workplace decorum.’ Things that have crumbled into dust in the aftermath of the fall of New York. Meaningless.

Phil parts his lips and traces the path again with his mouth, his tongue, tasting the sweat of Barton’s skin, pressing into him along the whole line of his body, their bodies slotting perfectly into one another, a long line of heat and trembling potential, together. He drops his hand from Barton’s mouth, pushes it around to the back of his head, through the short, spiky hair there, and breathes, for one long moment, suspended…

Before he angles his head and catches Barton’s lips, sealing their mouths together, swallowing the harsh cadence of his breath.

There’s a bright moment of shock, as of a circuit connecting. Something that’s utterly silent and also the loudest thing in the world. This is nothing like the kiss he stole from Barton earlier. This is something forged—a catastrophe—heavy water crumbling a dam that has barely held together for too long.

Both Barton’s hands rise to fist in Phil’s jacket, desperate for anchorage in the calamity they’re making together.

He tastes sweet. Like sugar. Rich like butter and vanilla, but also bitter like sorrow, sharp like pain. Like everything Phil had thought that he would taste like, when he’d allowed himself to think of it. Like life. Like hope.

Phil loses track of time. Lost in sensation, the hum of the lights overhead, the slick sound of their mouths moving together, the helpless noises Barton is making in his throat. The clock in his head, the one counting down seconds, keeping track of the orderly progression of events, the measured predictable sequence of reality—the handler, the administrator—goes silent.

He lets Barton go only when he realizes he’s lightheaded from lack of air. Pulls back only enough to clear a space for them to breathe together.

“Fuck,” Clint pants against his cheek. “What… what are… _fuck_ —”

Barton hasn’t moved, his hands still fisted in Phil’s jacket, his back still pressed against the wall. As if he’s afraid that whatever this is will vanish if he moves. His hands twist in the wool of Phil’s jacket. Afraid to take more, afraid to let go.

Phil takes a deep breath and steps back. Clint’s hands slide reluctantly from his coat as if he were expecting it.

“You have a choice,” Phil says. He draws breath to make yet another unforgivable error in judgement, another mistake, surprised when his voice comes out measured and even. “You can leave here, now, go out the way you came in. I won’t stop you.”

Barton catches his bottom lip between his teeth. “Or—?”

“You can turn around and go inside. You remember where the bedroom is. I can’t promise what will happen after that.”

A little bit of bravado creeps back into the quirk of Barton’s lips, the beginnings of a smile. “Gonna tie me up again, boss?”

Phil smirks at him. “I might. If you ask me nicely.”

They stare at each other, still close, the connection between them buzzing in the air. Phil wonders if the indefinable something between them will break when Barton steps out into Centre street, walks back home to his attic at the orphanage. Or if that will happen later, when he realizes that Phil is never coming back.

Barton turns around and goes inside.


End file.
